Peacock and Vine by A. S. Byatt: An Auctorbiography

Abstract

A.S. Byatt’s latest text, Peacock and Vine, published in 2016, is hard to qualify and thus stands as an exception in her work, or does it? The illustrated book dedicated to the lives and works of William Morris and Mariano Fortuny is not a fiction, but neither is it an essay in literary criticism like the ones Byatt published previously. It is rather an informal essay on art and life that has elements of a travelogue, a biography, an autobiography, and maybe most importantly, of an auctorbiography, to use the term coined by Jean-Louis Chevalier à propos a story entitled ‘Arachne’, as Byatt’s meditation sheds light on her own writing life and obsessions. Through the two figures whom she considers as exceptional in their dedication to their craft, Byatt draws her own self-portrait in this testimonial book published on her 80th birthday. The ‘tangential’ connections between the two artists, as they were qualified in several unfavourable reviews, provide an insight into the author’s creative process.

Keywords

• Byatt (A.S.)
• auctorbiography
• craft
• patterns
• domesticity
• ekphrasis