‘Seize Upon the Object’: John Banville and the Poetics of Archaeology
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 25/04/2023

Peter Stewart (University of Aberdeen)

The poetic prose of Booker-prize winning author John Banville has often been examined in the 
context of the academic discipline of history. The past is a constant theme in Banville’s work, 
whether he is recreating it in historical novels like Doctor Copernicus or Birchwood, depicting 
the struggles of a professional historian in The Newton Letter, or crafting images such as ‘the 
past beats inside me like a second heart,’ his famous sentence from The Sea. Banville himself 
has quipped that novelists may be the ‘unacknowledged historians of the world.’ 
However, I argue that the discipline of archaeology is also a useful lens through which to view 
Banville’s work. I believe there are several components of Banville’s philosophy which support 
this. His belief that poetry is found more frequently in prose than in verse, and that ‘the surface 
is where the real depth is,’ emphasises the importance of image and material description in his 
work. The influence of Beckett on Banville’s writings shapes his distrust of narrative 
conventions, reinforcing his emphasis on concrete description. The effect is that, like the 
archaeologist, Banville’s characters examine a decontextualised past through observation of 
the material world, with language as a vital yet flawed tool in this process.
Banville’s advice to writers is that they ‘seize upon the object, and the words will follow.’ I 
conclude by exploring ways in which this advice could be employed by archaeologists, with 
reference to Banville’s work and writings on archaeological poetics