Possession, a critically acclaimed novel by A.S. Byatt, weaves together the past and the present by paralleling a love affair between two poets in the Victorian era to two scholars in the nineteenth century. In order to accurately portray the poets and their scholars, Byatt was inspired by her own education and studies. Shifting from the two plot lines she uses literary techniques to differentiate between the opposing time periods, mastering both modern and historical language. Among the plotlines are the letters and poems that the two historians, Roland and Maud, find during their research. When reading the poems, written by the two fictional poets, it is transparent that the stylistic choices made by Byatt were well thought out and educated…show more content… Sludge the Medium’ serves as a sort of epigraph for Byatt’s novel, and comprises many stylistic elements that Byatt embodies in the writing of Randolph Henry Ash. Stylistically it is constructed as a long dramatic monologue narrated by Sludge, a spiritual medium. Dramatic dialogue allows the reader to enter the mind of the speaker and see events from their perspective, instilling a more emotional response from the reader. Blank verse, paratactic sentences, and aposiopesis are also included in Browning’s writing style in order to portray the messages he wishes the reader to relate to. Taking into account this piece by Browning, and the stylistic choices he made, Byatt introduces her novel with this piece, and is influenced into making Ash’s writing…show more content… This style, a distinguished form of writing for dramatic and narrative pieces, uses unrhymed iambic pentameter to tell a story rather then having a rhyme scheme that sounds more songlike. In Swammerdam the sentence structure is short and choppy as seen in sentences like, “I fear I trouble you. It will not be for long,” which is an example of paratactic sentences. Swammerdam also has rhetorical questions such as “Why not? Cannot abide the Infinite's questioning From smallest as from greatest?” Aposiopesis, a breaking off of speech, is then utilized through punctuation, such as dashes, calling for a pause and a slight reflection. All of these stylist elements are mastered by Browning and included in his