Neo-Victorian Fairy-Tale Topos and the Ways of its Creation” in “The Children’s Book” by A. S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt (1936–2023) is known as the author of several neo-Victorian novels, and she developed an original technic of her own for recreation of the Victorian topos by means of language and imagination. The reconstruction is carried out following three main lines: fictional characters, inserted texts and intertextuality. The article examines the line of inserted texts of fairy tales in Byatt’s last neo-Victorain novel “The Children’s Book” (2009), as well as the character of their author – a neo-Victorian storyteller Olive Wellwood – constructed on the basis of life and work of a famous Victorian children’s writer Edith Nesbit (1858–1924). In particular, a unique narrative method is highlighted, called by Byatt “ventriloquism”, as well as its role in the polemics of Byatt with postmodern criticism. The analysis of interaction of Byatt’s artistic language with Nesbit’s poetics reveals that the contemporary author applies pastiche as the main instrument for creating the neo-Victorian topos of fairy tales, and subsequently she recovers a unique mysterious and solemn atmosphere of this genre. Some other properties of Byatt’s fairy tales are emphasized like their being projections of the plot and meanings of the novel, and hybridity.

A.S. Byatt, Edith Nesbit, “The Children’s Book”, “Possession”, intertextuality, fairy-tale, pastiche, new-Victorian novel, “ventriloquism”, children’s literature, fictional and historical reconstruction