Every Other Thing Is Me: Wordsworthian Romantic Transcendence in the Postmodern Possession

A. S. Byatt structures the visionary moments in her postmodern historiographic metafiction, Possession , to be exemplary models of a Wordsworthian, rather than Shelleyan, view of transcendence, with many of her scenes including an undercurrent of the Freudian psychoanalytic session. Byatt's postmodern construct extends Romantic visionary moments beyond the scope of characters to the reader and illustrates that a postmodern frame will likely always fit more naturally with a Wordsworthian, rather than Shelleyan, understanding of transcendence.