Virginia Woolf's Reconstruction Of Reader-Author Relationship In Orlando: A Biography

This thesis aims to analyze Woolf's thoughts on reader-author relationship through a case study of her fantastic work Orlando: A Biography.The thesis points out that Woolf has special interest in readers' contribution to literary creation and she cares a lot the response from readers. This point can be found in her essays, letters, diaries and speeches, where Woolf frequently refers to the following topics, such as, the role of the reader in reading a book, the place of the reader in the author's mind, and the relationship between the reader and the author.After a thorough reading and analysis of Woolf's essays, speeches and letters in the creation of Orlando, the researcher finds that Woolf takes such views on reader-author relationship: the reader should be active, use his own imagination to participate in the construction of the text meaning and eventually find his place in reading;the author should bear his reader in mind in writing and be aware of the possible responses from the reader;thus, a collaboration relationship is formed between the reader and the author in the process endowing the text with significance.In the analysis of Orlando, the researcher finds that Woolf has adopted various unconventional literary techniques to attract the reader's attention: (1) the uncertainty of the genre;(2) multiple voices;(3) other fanciful elements, such as, asides cut in gaps and spaces narrative spaces and gaps between the shift of eras, places and sexes, unanswered questions and an open ending.In Orlando, the uncertainty of the genre is adopted to make the reader focus on the genre of the text and it manifests itself in this way: the book is titled Orlando: A Biography, but Woolf hasn't endowed it with conventional form and content. Thisuncertainty confuses the reader and raises curiosity in the reader at the same time. The researcher traces the uncertainty of the genre back to Woolf's intention to revolutionize biography as a genre: Woolf determines to find a new way to depict a person and endow "biography" new significance in writing Orlando.In reading Orlando, the reader can hear two voices—the voice from the narrator who commits herself to the natural presentation of the story and the reflexive one who appears as a traditional biographer interrupting to question the propriety and credibility of the presentation, which provides the reader with a double-leveled aesthetic experience—the narrative level where the reader accepts the representation of the story and the authorial level at which the reader is triggered to participate in the construction of the subject.Besides, Woolf also uses many other fanciful elements, such as, asides cut in gaps and spaces narrative spaces and gaps between the shift of eras, places and sexes, unanswered questions and an open ending, which contributes a lot in inspiring reflections in the reader and deepening the reader's understanding of the text.