A Study Of The Poetic Presentational Techniques In To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is one pioneering representative of modern novels. She has made a great contribution to the development of modern novels in writing and literary theories. The novel To the Lighthouse is considered to be the most outstanding work by many critics. This book, created in Virginia Woolf's writing career of great prosperity, fully embodies her unique style and exquisite writing skills.In the beginning of the 1920s, the British society was caught in the turmoil of the political, economic, ideological and cultural aspects. The traditional religion, philosophy, aesthetic concepts have been suspected. People's way of thinking and different levels of society have undergone tremendous changes, Virginia Woolf, under the influence of literature of her time, thought that literature has to change its form in order to reflect the contemporary times and society and that it should be comprehensive and systematic to reveal the mysteries and the universal law of the human spiritual activities and to percept life that performs people's erratic emotional life. So she was relentlessly in her devotion to the novel form and content innovationTo the Lighthouse, from being labeled as narrow to be called the essence of the spirit of the times and modern art, has been a concern since the 1930s. From the late 1980s, Chinese scholars began to focus on the narrative perspective, discourse pattern, stream-of-consciousness for the interpretation of To the Lighthouse. The focus of attention in the late 1990s turned to the androgyny and women position that are expressed in the work. It has been shown beyond question that a successful writing is a perfect blend of content with the form in which that content is presented. So this thesis intends to explore Woolf's writing techniques in the novel To the Lighthouse from a totally different perspective: poetry methods, post-impressionist Painting art and music form. I hope this can do a little contribution to Virginia Woolf's overall research.This paper is composed by introduction, the theoretical perspective, the main body and conclusion.In the first part of introduction, I generally introduce the social and cultural background of Woolf's times, Woolf's creative life and relative literature bibliography, and explain the reasons for this topic, purpose and significance.In the second part of the theoretical perspective, I introduce the feature of modern novels and stream-of-consciousness novels as well as the unique theory of Woolf's own novels.The third part is the main body of the thesis. From poetic methods, post-impressionist painting art, music form, I carefully show the readers the performance of these unique skills.Woolf, in essence, is not a novelist but a poet. She always works with a beautiful lyrical poetry atmosphere and moods. Woolf, in To the Lighthouse, uses symbols, images and metaphors and other rhetoric methods to show us vivid and lively textual. This part firstly focuses on window, mirror, and the canvas these three visual images and how they reveal the relationship between the spiritual world and objective reality, also including appreciation of numerous small images. Secondly is the analysis of metaphor of the two different principles on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey. Finally, universal symbol of the lighthouse and contextual symbol of dinner party prepared by Mrs. Ramsey and Lily's painting are explored, and the hidden life philosophy as they contain is also pointed outWoolf uses deformation in post-impressionist painting, multi-perspective, and orderly lines to highlight the character's personality, therefore strongly performing the main characters' spirit of exploration. (1) Distortion of form in Painting is, according to the need of inner feelings, to change real objects into abstract symbols or bizarre images, creating a new realm of extraordinary art. It doesn't show the true reality but only to shape real psychology. The lighthouse in the novel, in different characters' minds, has different forms of distortion. But any kind of state is real, as it is in harmony with people's state of mind. (2)Multi-Perspective refers to the sense of space or three-dimension, simply said, refers to the impression of an object from different angles. In the thesis we are from positive, profile, the perspective of art and memory angles to observe Mrs. Ramsay to obtain the overall objective impression. (3)There is a necessity that the writer must make clear the delicate relations between the important moments, organize them into a harmonious integration, which is more important than the creation of a form of art. Woolf runs through the novel the whole day and night with Mrs. Ramsey's dinner party, Lily's painting, and landing onto the lighthouse several clues to make irrelevant factors into an orderly spiritual wholeness.Three factors are borrowed from music form in the novel. (1) Its tripartite structure fully corresponds to sonata form's exposition part, development part and recapitulation part. On the basis of contrast and balance, this kind of structure is simple yet strict, reflecting a unique formal beauty. (2) Leitmotif refers to a short recurring fragment of music or theme that marks certain character, concept or mood. But in literature, leitmotif is a recurring images, or phrase, which has a fixed relationship with certain people, objects, and concept. Leitmotif is used here as a rhetorical means to strengthen stylistic effect, making the character's image more typical and full. (3) Woolf borrowed rhythm of music, pursuing neat form and phonological harmony. She also uses alliteration, anaphora, parataxis and rhyme to create continuous beauty of rhythm.The fourth part is the conclusion: after a profound analysis of some presentational methods in To the Lighthouse, a conclusion can be drawn that Virginia Woolf is a novelist of distinction who has surpassed most of her contemporaries in her sensitive fidelity to the most evanescent movements of consciousness and her genuine insight into the workings of people's mind. She is a tireless, creative innovator who keeps experimenting and has always something original to say. Last but not least, her fiction gives one of the impressions of delicate and subtle artist in words, who upholds aesthetic and spiritual values in a brutal, materialistic age.