Soothsaying song thrushes and life-giving snails : motifs in A.S. Byatt's "Babel Tower" and "A whistling woman"

Journal of English Studies

Jennifer Anne Johnson¹ 

[1] University of Málaga;

关键词: a. s. byatt;    contemporary british fiction;    song thrush and snails;    intertextuality;    fiction and science;   

DOI  :  10.18172/jes.148

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Thrushes and snails are scattered throughout the pages of A .S. Byatt’s Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, functioning as motifs that link the main narrative with its intertexts, thematically and symbolically. Although the thrush appears to be a predatory creature, it links a line of soothsayers and helpers created by Byatt herself as well as others in the works of Robert Browning, J.R.R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy. The snail is a complex figure, associated with myths of life and death as well as with scientific research into neuroscience, environmental studies and DNA, the basis for all life. As a result it serves to bridge the two cultures of the literary and scientific worlds in the second half of Byatt’s tetralogy.

【 授权许可】

Unknown