Visita guidata a ''Babel Tower'' di Antonia Susan Byatt

My final graduation thesis mainly aims to be a guide for those who would like to venture for the first time on reading Babel Tower, third of the four volumes about Frederica Potter, also known as “Frederica Quartet”, by Antonia Susan Byatt.
After a short introduction dealing with the publishing strategies, that for a long time prevented the italian public from reading all the tetralogy in the order established by the author, we find an analysis of the factors that mainly determine the darkness of the novel: the constant extratextual references and the fact that we are moving into the field of postmodernism.
As for the first aspect, part of the difficulty is to blame on Byatt’s knowledge concerning several fields, but the novel shows further lacks of meaning that can be partly filled by a research of the sources for the foreign reader that did not live the decade of the 60’s.
The second factor deals with the way the information is conveyed by the author. Typical features of the postmodernist style are the frequent flashbacks, the deal with themes once considered taboos, the great use of quotations, the lack of information, the collage, digressions: elements we can find in Babel Tower.
My work shifts inside the novel focusing -when present- postmodern techniques and the principal issues brought out by the author: the dialectics between connection and lamination and the problem of language.
The first theme derives from the invite of E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence to connect with the beloved one in a mystic Oneness, and then move away. The strenuously romantic position of the two authors seems now unacceptable to Frederica, because it clashes into the failure of her connection -the marriage with Nigel-, and also because when she tests herself against writing she realises that the language was already outdated by the time and that the form of the novel is abused.
Furthermore, if we consider the huge number of characters created by the author in this novel, we understand that the dialectics between connection and lamination is the basis for their turbulent relationships and for the interior conflicts of many of them, struggling between the desire of indipendence and the one of connection with the other.
The problem is also analysed through an embedded narrative. In fact in nine chapters we find a bitter tale of a group of men and women, escaped from the Reign of Terror, repairing to Culvert's possessions in order to found a community of equals, systematically alternating to the principal story.
The theme of language is also dealt with several aspects: the lack of communication between Frederica and Nigel, the incapability of the protagonist to express herself in the legal language, that does not see any tones but is exclusively made of assertions, the investigations of the Steerforth Committee of Enquiry on the Teaching of the English Language, the Culvert's speech to the community, wishing to create a new universal language relating to things, the utopian search for the Ursprache, common to glottologists, theologians, teachers and neuroscientists and the suggestion of the author that is to be searched for in the genetic structure.
My work ends with a synopsis of the novel to help the reader furtherly.