Virginia Woolf's Art Of Fiction In To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf, the outstanding representative of the stream of consciousness novel in England, made an eminent contribution to its vigorous development in both theory and practice. To the Lighthouse, which was written in the prime period of her literary career, is usually considered as her best work in which her writing techniques come to perfection.The spirit of Virginia Woolf's age was one of change, change at all levels and all aspects. In religion and ethics, in philosophy and aesthetics, traditional ideas were called into question; in politics and society, old systems and institutions were experiencing tumult. Being an extremely sensitive writer, Virginia Woolf could not help being influenced by her surroundings. In striving to present the rapid and often disturbing changes of her age, Virginia Woolf felt it essential to reform her means of expression. Therefore, she spared no efforts to make writing experiments and produced works with special characteristics of her own. In this thesis, the present writer will, taking To the Lighthouse as an example, make a probing analysis of her writing techniques in several aspects.Chapter One deals with Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness technique in To the Lighthouse. In presenting her characters' interior world, Virginia Woolf usuallyresorts to two kinds of methods: interior monologue and free association. Firstly, this part discusses definition of interior monologue and the difference between direct and indirect interior monologue. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf displays her originality and consummate skills in the employment of such a technique. She guides her readers successfully by frequent use of parentheses and sentences like "she thought," "she felt," and "she supposed". Her unique devices greatly liberate her works from the inherent chaos of disorder, formlessness, and obscurity in the stream-of-consciousness novel. However, such devices also contribute to the tinges of conventional appearance of her novel sometimes. Secondly, chapter one also endeavors to discuss Virginia Woolf's use of free association in controlling the movement of consciousness in To the Lighthouse. By analyzing Mrs. Ramsay's free association in the 7-10th chapters of the first part and Lily Briscoe's in the eleventh chapter of the last part, we shall have an idea of how Virginia Woolf depicts her characters' inner world through this technique.Chapter Two is devoted to exploring the musicality of this fiction. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf processes and inconspicuously integrates into her art all that music can offer her in the way of technical and thematic inspiration. The creative tripartite structure of To the Lighthouse seems to fall into an accurate analogy with the sonata form, which not only adds coherence and aesthetic beauty to the novel, but also greatly helps to convey the themes of the novel. Apart from the sonata structure, quite a few leitmotifs alsoreside within this novel. They act toward a variety of purposes. The third element which characterizes the musicaiity of To the Lighthouse is the beauty of her language in rhyme and rhythm. Virginia Woolf employs alliteration, homeoteleuton, anaphora, epistrophe and other structures, and makes them work well to be integrated with rhythm, rhyme and pace.Chapter Three aims to discuss the time-montage and multiple viewpoint technique in To the Lighthouse. Taking examples from the fiction, we see how Virginia Woolf transfers the cinematic method to fiction to represent the inner life simultaneously with the outer life, and see how she manipulates manifold points of view and offers the signals to determine the angle of narration.Chapter Four attempts a discussion of the poetic ingredient of To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf weaves into this novel a profusion of celebrated images, figures of speech and, most of all, symbols. All these poetic methods add enchantment to this novel and enhance its vividness, richness and suggestiveness.With the subtle presentation of interior monologue, the gr...