Cell by cell, gene by gene, galaxy by galaxy: A. S. Byatt's scientific imagination

Abstract

Right from her first novels, A. S. Byatt’s fiction is pervaded by scientific knowledge, derived from very different branches of science. From the Darwinian neo-Victorian stories of Angels and Insects (1992) to her latest reworking of Ragnarok’s myth in Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (2011), revealing obvious environmental concerns, we will find in her fiction the mind of a writer for whom the materiality of science makes possible a more objective understanding of the world that surrounds us. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to provide an overview of what we here call A. S. Byatt’s “scientific imagination” as displayed in a great part of her fiction and, on the other, to focus on the way Byatt’s scientific imagination intertwines with her conception of artistic knowledge and vision.