Discursive Intertextuality, Parody, and Mise en Abyme in A.S. Byatt’s Short Stories

Abstract

This essay analyses three short stories from A.S. Byatt's collection Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (1998) in light of several self-reflexive strategies. The short narratives Crocodile Tears and Baglady will be discussed from the perspective of "discursive intertextuality," a literary practice that foregrounds a discursive element established and detectable across genres.
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary will be examined from the standpoint of intertextuality and mise en abyme. Once again, the study of this narrative will hinge on the discursive aspects of mise en abyme as a meta-generic approach put in place not to indefinitely reiterate "the same" concept, but to show the potentially endless possibilities of interpretation a text may offer its readers. Across these short stories, the opposition between fire and ice gets reworked in corresponding dichotomous sets: North vs. South, West vs. Orient, contemplative vs. active life. The specific goal this article sets itself to achieve is to show the contrasting trajectories at play in these short stories. Dense with contrasting and intersecting meta-generic paths, such narratives perform and make visible a double register of devotion/affection and
questioning/deconstruction of genre norms in relation to established Anglophone discursive
tropes.