How we cite our quotes: Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
Quote #1
Vico had looked for historical fact in the poetic metaphors of myth and legend; this piecing together was his 'new science'. His Proserpine was the corn, the origin of commerce and community. Randolph Henry Ash's Proserpine had been seen as a Victorian reflection of religious doubt, a meditation on the myths of resurrection. […] Blackadder had a belief that she represented, for Randolph Ash, a personification of History itself in its early mythical days. (1.6)
Possession introduces us to historical themes really early on, and the novel continues to expand on them throughout the rest of its 500+ pages. We mean, we're talking Greek mythology here, and it doesn't get a whole lot older than that. And yet we all still know those stories, right?
Quote #2
Folded into the page of Vico on which the passage appeared was a bill for candles on the back of which Ash had written: 'The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.' (1.9)
As we'll see throughout Possession, the significance of the individual person within the long span of history—including both the distant past and the distant future—is a recurring theme in Randolph Henry Ash's writing and thought. In his view, people ought to be remembered for what they've contribute to humanity as a whole. No pressure.
Quote #3
In 1986 he was twenty-nine, a graduate of Prince Albert College, London (1978) and a PhD of the same university (1985). His doctoral dissertation was entitled History, Historians and Poetry? A Study of the Presentation of Historical 'Evidence' in the Poems of Randolph Henry Ash. He had written it under the supervision of James Blackadder, which had been a discouraging experience. (2.3)
Roland Mitchell's doctoral dissertation focused on questions relating to history and historiography in Randolph Henry Ash's writings. As readers, we may wonder if he chose this topic himself or if it was suggested to him by James Blackadder, who has also written on "relative historiography" in R.H. Ash's works (1.6). As they say, professors themselves may not know it, but what they sometimes want most is to reproduce themselves.