In the postmodern mirror: intertextuality in Angels and Insects by Antonia Susan Byatt

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyse the novel Angels and Insects by Antonia Susan Byatt in terms of intertextual references. The author’s assumptions are based on the categorisation by Ryszard Nycz, who distinguishes three major types of intertexts: text versus text, text versus literary genre and text versus mimesis. Byatt uses intertextuality mainly to comment on the role of nature in the world, as well as to enhance the importance of human relationship with nature. Moreover, the writer moves towards literary criticism, discussing poems by famous artists, such as Alfred Tennyson or John Milton. In this way, the novel by Byatt is also an example of metafiction. All the narration techniques used by the English writer make the novel a typically postmodern work of art.

Keywords

• intertextuality
• postmodernism
• metafiction