A.S. Byatt's "Morpho Eugenia": Prolegomena to Any Future Theory

In a recent essay, Michael Levenson compellingly claims that A.S. Byatt's novella "Morpho Eugenia" dramatizes the crucial nineteenth-century intellectual debates that anticipate contemporary theory. According to Levenson, Byatt responded to the nineteenth-century crisis in knowledge by constructing a reinvigorated realism, which is based on a fluid theory of language as incarnation. By contrast, I contend that the nineteenth-century crisis led Byatt to distinguish two separate rhetorical stances, one that takes into account the role that anthropomorphism plays in the construction of knowledge, and one that either dismisses or ignores the role of anthropomorphism in the construction of knowledge. For Byatt, since anthropomorphism is inescapable, it is impossible to overcome it. Therefore, instead of trying to overcome anthropomorphism by reinvigorating realism, humans should learn how to interact responsibly with others and the world given the inevitability of the anthropomorphic. Such is the primary lesson to be learned from the nineteenth century crisis in knowledge, according to Byatt.