Information about the author:
Iaroslava Iu. Muratova
Iaroslava Iu. Muratova, PhD in Philology, Professor Assistant, Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature and Creative Writing, Tverskoy Bulvar, 25, 123104 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2229-8675
E-mail:
Abstract:
The article considers sophisticated narrative tools used by A.S. Byatt in her neo-Victorian novel The Children’s Book (2009) for the reconstruction of literary and historical portrait of Victorianism. The study outlines two aspects of the novel’s intertextuality in particular. First, it is the narrative strategies applied by A.S. Byatt to create the central figure — a fictional children’s writer, Olive Wellwood. This character is “assembled” from biographical and literary legacy of Edith Nesbit (1858–1924), the famous children’s writer and one of the founders of Fabian Society. The other aspect is connected with the work of the fictional writer and puts into focus the interaction of Nesbit’s poetics and Byatt’s language. The article draws particular attention to the inserted texts of fairy tales written in the form of pastish referring Nesbit’s tales, as well as their intertextuality features. Also, it states that the inserted fairy tales are of “hydridic” nature and can also be looked on as neo-Victorian; they function as projections of no- vel’s themes and conflicts.
