History, Memory and Experience in A. S. Byatt's Neo-Victorian Fiction

In this book the author shows the connections between literature and historiography as exemplified by the neo-Victorian fiction of the British writer A.S. Byatt, specifically in her novels 'Possession', 'The Biographer's Tale' and 'The Children's Book', as well as the two novellas in 'Angels and Insects'. The theoretical framework is provided by the texts of two philosophers of history, Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit. The author starts with the theory of narrativism and its influence on literature, and then shows the development of the historiographical appproach towards new categories of mediating the past, namely memory and experience, which are visible both in historical writing and fiction. In this way, the author demonstrates how histography and literature follow the same patterns in the presentation of the past.