Bridging Temporal Gaps from Medieval to Postmodern in Byatt’s Possession: A Romance

Year 2026, Issue: 5, 35 - 45, 26.01.2026

Aleyna Durmuş

Abstract

The article examines A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance through a neomedievalist and postmodern lens by locating the novel’s twin narrative structure alongside the medieval allegory The Romance of the Rose. Drawing on Linda Hutcheon’s theory of historiographic metafiction, the study explores Byatt’s reimagination of the past not as a fixed historical origin, but as a layered, interpretive space where medieval, Victorian, and contemporary timelines come together and interact with one another. Through dialogic engagement with history, the novel foregrounds the act of reading as a mode of meaning-making across temporal divides. The analysis focuses on key spatial motifs, such as gardens, towers, and enclosed spaces, to explore how desire, possession, and identity formation unfold across these temporal strata. Within this framework, the rose, originally a symbol of courtly love, is reframed as a metaphor for desire’s continual deferral and reinterpretation. Byatt’s rewriting of medieval romance through Victorian and postmodern narrative structures reveals desire not as conquest or possession, but as a dynamic, non-possessive mode of relationality.

Keywords

Historiographic metafiction , postmodernism , neomedievalism , allegory , desire , identity , A.S. Byatt , Possession: A Romance , Romance of the Rose

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