Analysis On The Intertextuality Between The Hours And Mrs Dalloway

Michael Cunningham is the famous contemporary writer of America. His Novel The Hours, which was written on the basis of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and published in 1998, described three women's life in only one day while the three of them were from different times. The Hours won the 1999 Pulitzer prize for fiction. Then it was adapted into a movie in 2002 which won the Golden Globe Award and access to a number of Oscar nominations. The researches on The Hours at home and abroad are mainly from the views of feminism, writing skills, imagery analysis and so on, but there is not much analysis on the relation of The Hours and Mrs Dalloway from the perspective of intertextuality. This essay will analyze The Hours from the perspective of intertextuality and explore The Hours's critical inheritance and creative rebellion from Mrs Dalloway. Being different from other critics'analysis on the novel The Hours with the help of the film version of it, I will rely on the novel only and intend to explore it in a way of digging a tunnel deeply by adopting the history empirical method, aesthetic criticism method and close-reading method of Comparative Literature. The essay mainly includes the following five parts:The introduction part will brief Michael Cunningham and his novel The Hours and present the research status of this novel, and then come up with the possibility of studying The Hours from the perspective of intertextuality and the research purposes and methods.The first chapter mainly expounds the manifestation of intertextuality between The Hours and Mrs Dalloway. This chapter will firstly interpret the theory and technique of intertextuality and point out the intertextuality between the two novels. Then it will discuss the psychological reason of the intertextual writing and how did Michael Cunningham try to surpass Virginia Woolf when he was under the anxiety of influence of the latter. At last, this chapter will indicate that intertextual writing is like dancing with chains, while it was under this very restriction that Michael Cunningham represented and deepened the concern about female psychological and existence state, which had been displayed by Virginia Woolf, and transcended Virginia Woolf in some way by jumping a modern dance that reshaped the classic.The second chapter basically studies The Hours's critical inheritance from Mrs Dalloway from the parody of writing technique to the parody of the main plots and imagery, from the intensification of the feminism to the rewriting of the homosexual tendency. As an important intertextual writing skill, parody has shown the direct relation with the original text no matter in the way of converting or distorting and no matter the parody purpose is out of playing and revolting or appreciating and revering. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham parodied Mrs Dalloway from"Structure"to"Texture"and undertook the modernity rumination about the text on the basis of parody.The third chapter tries to illuminate The Hours's creative rebellion from Mrs Dalloway from the aspects of Virginia Woolf's writing, Laura's reading and the interdependence of the author, the reader and the works. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham put Virginia Woolf's conceiving of Mrs Dalloway and Clarissa's practicing Mrs Dalloway's experiences and Laura's reading Mrs Dalloway on the same platform as three parallel clues, which is not only a way for him to achieve the creative rebellion from Mrs Dalloway but also shows his wish that the author, the works and the reader can fuse perfectly.The conclusion part points out the significance of Michael Cunningham's intertextual writing of The Hours. Michael Cunningham employed"Meaningful Form"to conduct the critical inheritance and creative rebellion from Mrs Dalloway. And the novelty of The Hours's writing skill and the elegance of its structure has proved the immortal charm of"art for art's sake", while its concern about female's existence dilemma generation by generation and rumination about the further way of the feminism has embodied the intervention function of"art for life's sake". Meanwhile, Michael Cunningham discussed the status of the author and cleverly suggested the interdependence among the author,the reader and the works by setting the roles of characters in The Hours ingeniously.