The question of knowledge and the need for metaphor : A.S. Byatt's The virgin in the garden and Still life

This thesis examines the two completed novels of A.S. Byatt's Potter cycle, The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life, using a synthetical model that combines Jacques Derrida's heliotropic model for metaphor with elements of neoplatonism and logocentric structuralism. Working from Iris Murdoch's demands regarding character, it specifically examines five characters from the Potter cycle and the manner in which their movement from a neoplatonic position to a structural position, and back again, can be traced by the imposition of Derrida's heliotropic model for metaphor. It is this imposition that implies the need for metaphor as a vehicle for knowledge. The thesis attempts to prove first that Byatt's characters do remain intelligible and whole, and secondly that Byatt's use of both neoplatonism and structuralism is not the result of a flawed execution, but is an attempt to create a fusion out of these oppositions, resulting in a workable process for the gaining of knowledge.