An Analysis Of The Narrative Devices In To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf,one of the prominent representatives of modernist novelist in England, has contributed significantly to the development of modern novel in both theory and practice.She abandoned traditional fictional devices and formulated her own distinctive techniques.The novels of Woolf tend to be less concerned with outward reality than with the inner life.Her masterpiece,To the Lighthouse,serves as an excellent sample in analyzing Woolf's literary theory and her experimental techniques.This paper mainly elaborates Woolf's art of literary creation by analyzing her famous novel To the Lighthouse from three aspects:stream-of-consciousness literary techniques, cinematic methods and symbolic methods.The first chapter deals with the use of modern stream-of-consciousness literary techniques:indirect interior monologue and free association.In Woolf's novels,characters' spiritual world is always her focal point.In order to reflect the inner world of her characters in a true and profound way,she made full use of her unique stream of consciousness literary techniques.Indirect interior monologue allows the narrator to reveal the characters' flow of thoughts and takes the reader into the consciousness of the characters in the novel.Free association makes the reader step into the inner worlds of her characters by their feelings,thoughts,memories,etc.The second chapter analyzes her use of cinematic methods:Time montage and multiple viewpoints.Analyzing the examples from the fiction,we can understand how Virginia Woolf adopts cinematic methods in fiction to reveal us inner activities as well as outer activities.Time montage can fully reflect characters' experiences at different time and create a three-dimensional effect.Multiple viewpoints can make the story narrated in different points of view and make the reader provided with the psychological communication among different characters.The third chapter discusses about her symbolic methods.Woolf was not only a novelist of stream-of-consciousness,but also a poet.With the edifying influence of all kinds of art, Woolf established her unique poetic theory and created a special sort of poetic novel. Hence,when we make a comment on the narrative art of Woolf's work,it's partial to discuss her techniques of stream of consciousness and cinematic methods only without mentioning her poetic methods at all.This part of the paper elaborates the poetics of To the Lighthouse by mainly analyzing symbolic features.Not only the novel's structure but also its characters and objects are symbolic.The various symbols make up the complete picture of reality and bring us vividness and suggestiveness.By analyzing the usage of about stream-of-consciousness techniques,cinematic methods and symbolic methods in To the Lighthouse,we find she never simply follows the traditional way that other novelists had made.She has invented her original and unique devices and extensively adopted many of its techniques in other artistic forms such as film and poetry.Her most representative work To the Lighthouse cannot only be regarded as stream-of-consciousness novel.Such kind of novel with so perfect artistic characteristics is really rare in modern literature world.Although the historical period when modernism acted as a main trend in literature has ended,the experimental techniques adopted by the modernist writers have further influence upon literary creation.Virginia Woolf's individualized and experimental art of fiction has offered significance not only in studying the modern fiction but also in literary creation.