Ekphrastic Narrative as a Worldview and Cultural Code in A.S. Byatt’s novel "The Children’s Book"

Abstract

The article is motivated by the relevance of the problem of intermedial strategies in modern literature and the cultural and aesthetic significance of the intermedial component in the work of the British writer Antonia Susan Byatt. Intermediality is a key feature of A.S. Byatt’s writing, where she actively employs the artistic technique of ekphrasis. In her famous novel The Children’s Book, ekphrasis, as one of the types of intermedial correlations, is the leading technique with which the writer portrays a comprehensive panorama of the cultural and historical era of the border between the 19th and 20th centuries and fulfills her creative goals. The article aims to analyse intermedial correlations and features of the functioning of ekphrastic inclusions in A.S. Byatt’s novel. The Children’s Book can be considered as a single extensive “ekphrastic collection”, the ekphrases of which deepen the depicted image of society and man at the turn of the ages. The provided analysis allows us to conclude that the postmodern ekphrases of A.S. Byatt show the lively dialogue of the writer with the vast expanse of European culture and art determined by her worldview and creative position. Ekphrases serve the writer as a bridge between the artistic experience of the past and reflections of modern culture, as well as perform meaning-making, prognostic, characterising, and aesthetic functions that express the outlook, intellectual, cultural-aesthetic, descriptive, and narrative nature of the British author’s ekphrastic insertions. Ekphrases of A.S. Byatt manifest a unique feature of the writer’s aesthetic language and creative writing, which is explicated in most of her works. It is Byatt’s dominant intention to engage in dialogue with the unified field of European humanist culture to revise and reconceptualise the past, generate new meanings, and affirm the absolute value of art.