| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates how Byatt’s literary mystery Possession uses elements of
antidetective fiction and subverts conventions of the classic detective story. The classic
detective novel is a genre in which the strange and mysterious is always explained,
rationalized, eradicated, and abolished by the detective. While classic detective stories
feature red herrings and false leads which delay the solution of the mystery, the detective
uses his/her superior intellect and reasoning ability to successfully unravel such
diversions and get at the bare bones of real truth. In contrast, the antidetective novel
foregrounds a world where the disconcerting realm of mystery remains unsolved, the
quest to pin an answer on the unknown unsatisfied. In the antidetective novel, the
detective’s struggle to figure out the truth is often mocked, undermined, and forever
delayed by the author.
To support my claim that Possession is a metafictional antidetective novel, I
analyse, in detail, the detective process Byatt designs for both fictional detectives and
extra-textual readers. My discussion of the investigative process in Possession focuses
on the narrative games Byatt creates between readers and writers inside and outside of
the fiction. The various pieces of written discourses Possession features as textual clues
keep much of the mystery of the past an enigma, thereby destroying the closure and
positivism inherent in classic detective fiction.
In Possession Byatt concocts a flexible reading game/detective process via an
unstable ontological horizon, unreliable narration, and dubious intrusions by the
omniscient narrator. While the metafictional antidetective novel Possession strives to
undermine and assault the classic detective’s search for the truth, Byatt’s art affirms the
energy of dynamic storytelling and the process, not product, of reading. | |
