Britishness as Universality: Literary Cartography in A. S. Byatt’s ‘Frederica Quartet’, (original) (raw)

Abstract

"A 20th century Bildungsroman formed by four volumes, A. S. Byatt’s Frederica Quartet represents the most thorough expression of the construction of English identity within the novelist’s entire production. The Quartet, in fact, depicts Frederica Potter’s process of growth as a path through integration within English culture. Britishness in the Quartet is evoked by an intricate web of intertextuality and metafiction, mostly belonging to what Lena Steveker, in the wake of Jan Assmann's work, defined as ‘British cultural memory’ (Identity and Cultural Memory in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt, 87). So, allegorical representations and the literary “presence” of the greatest figures of British culture, such as Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Tolkien, Blake and George Eliot, effectively place and establish the heroine as English. In this view, Still Life marks a caesura between Frederica’s adolescence and adulthood, interestingly stressed by her journey to Southern France. Provencal colours and traditions, mediated by Van Gogh’s paintings, represent an estranging reality where integration is not possible. Her journey, therefore, claims Frederica’s Britishness and states her ultimate belonging to her own country. However, Byatt’s aim in the Quartet is not to celebrate English tradition: it is to depict her protagonist’s Bildung, which, though having national connotations, has universal validity. Struggling through shaping her destiny, Frederica, like her nineteenth-century ancestor Elizabeth Bennet, finds happiness in life after making the very mistakes that enable her process of growth. So, her Bildung occurs within Franco Moretti’s ‘compromise [where] conflicting principles have indeed reached an accord, but without having lost their diversity’ (The Way of the World, 95). As a consequence, Frederica’s very Britishness is what makes her human, therefore universal. Byatt’s Quartet is ultimately part of the European Bildungsroman tradition and, while describing a particular national context, in reality it gives voice to the universal instances of everyman’s pursuit for happiness. "

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