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“What’s Love Got to Do With It?”: Postmodernism and Possession

1996; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/esc.1996.0042

1913-4835

Jackie Buxton,

Themes in Literature Analysis

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?’ POSTMODERNISM AND POSSESSION JACKIE BUXTON York University The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmod­ ern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, “I love you madly,” because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, “As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.” At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of lost innocence. If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will have accepted the challenge of the past, of the already said, which cannot be eliminated; both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony. ... But both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love. Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose 67-68 T h e year 1990 saw the publication of an academic novel that became “a surprise best-seller” ; within three months it had carried off the Booker Prize and the Irish Times-Aer Lingus International Fiction Award. By midJanuary 1991 it was into its eighth print run and was being lauded as the season’s runaway success. The book was Possession, a title that uncannily prophesied its readerly effect. Unabashedly subtitled A Romance, Posses­ sion concerns the illicit passion of two Victorian poets, and the contemporary scholars who discover, and subsequently map, their relationship. As weighty as any of its Victorian antecedents, Possession encompasses two centuries and a good many of the generic forms of literary history. In more than five hundred pages, the reader is presented with substantial examples of mem­ oirs, fairy tales, academic essays, diaries and journals, public and private correspondence, and, of course, poetry — over sixteen hundred lines of it, in fact. Clearly, Possession is no ordinary novel. Reviewers were unanimous in their praise, and virtually unanimous in their implicit or explicit tagging English Studies in Canada, 22, 2, June 1996 of the novel as postmodernist. Highly forthcoming in their approval, they were less forthright in outlining the reasons for this postmodern classifica­ tion. Perhaps this is so self-evident as not to require explanation? Even the most cursory of surveys of literature on the subject, however, shows that “postmodernism” is by no means an uncontested category; indeed, to claim that “postmodernism” is problematic is almost a satiric understatement of the case. No doubt, if questioned, these reviewers’ responses to the question of what postmodernism is would run the length of the definitive spectrum. What is more interesting to me is the repeated descriptive attribution to Possession of that single term. Thus it is not my intention to throw another definition of postmodernism into the theoretical arena (although that will probably be inevitable); rather, I want to examine those aspects of the novel that may have led to its categorization as postmodern, and the political and aesthetic consequences of that critical understanding. My concern is less with what postmodernism is, than with what its proponents and detractors claim that it does. How might the debate settle on and around Possession, and, more important, how does Possession quite self-consciously activate this debate? What’s love got to do with it? Everything, it seems. While reviewers applaud Possession as a virtuoso performance of academic erudition, nineteenth-century ventriloquism, comedy, passion, and narrative allure, they are divided with respect to an explicit identification of its lit­ erary placement. Drawing attention to Possession’s generic pastiche, its self-conscious interrogation of literary and historical Truth, and a plot that resembles a corridor of mirrors, many critics employ the language of...