ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on establishing the significance of the Romantic artist as anti-hero in Michael Ondaatje's fiction before concentrating on his best-known work, The English Patient. The English Patient is often described as a poetic novel and Ondaatje considers some of his collections of lyrics, including Secular Love, to be novelistic in terms of structure and plot. The chapter focuses on Ondaatje's Byronic treatment of identity, as well as the interrelated issues of genre and form. Ondaatje's postmodern resistance to dominant narratives affords an additional vantage point from which to view Byron's poetry. Parallels with Byron's poetry will be, for the most part, drawn from Manfred and sections of the Oriental tales. The heroines of Manfred and The English Patient suffer another, metaphorical form of violence, which could be termed textual diminishment. In Manfred, Byron stages the lyric, showcasing his hero's fascinating flaws, while Ondaatje's fiction is innately dramatic, hybrid, and tests the formal boundaries of art.
