THE ARCHITECTONICS OF FATE: EQUILIBRIUM AND THE PROCESS OF CREATION IN THE WORK OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND VIRGINIA WOOLF. (VOLUMES I AND II)

The purpose of this study is to show that there is a clear relationship between romantic theories of imagination and the concept of the imagination which underlies the modern British novel. The basis of this relationship is an acute vulnerability to experience on the part of writers of each tradition. Using the works of William Wordsworth and Virginia Woolf, I investigate the problems of perception characteristic of the romantic and modern periods. An analysis of the works of Wordsworth and Woolf in the context of their theories of literary creation shows that both writers build poetic structures that stabilize their perception and allow them to turn external reality into permanent forms of art.;I show that the writers are exhausted by their conscious efforts to manipulate experience and imagination; they long to relinquish the pains of perception and create works in which the self finally disappears. I suggest that the concern with self-consciousness in the major texts of Wordsworth and Woolf is necessarily transformed into the undifferentiated abstraction of their late work.;Besides the major works of each writer, I consider Wordsworth's letters and Woolf's letters and diaries. I use the manuscript versions of the central texts, The Prelude and The Waves, because the drafts allow the reader to see Wordsworth and Woolf in the struggle of creation, working out the problems of successful artistry. The first part of this study considers Wordsworth's receptiveness to sensation and shows how the poet forms protective boundaries within the lyric intensity of his work. The second part examines Woolf's reactions to experience and studies the way her predilection for order controls and predicts the forms her imaginative vision takes.