Aestheticism Embodied In Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf has been generally acknowledged as one of the best English modernist novelists. Ever since the release of Modern Fiction (1919), wherein she made her declaration of war on the traditional way of writing, she had made incessant efforts in the pursuit of fictional experiment. With To the Lighthouse, which is regarded as one of her greatest experimental novels, Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers in modern English literature. The novel, since its publication in the 1930s, has been studied from varied theoretical perspectives including psychoanalysis, feminism, new criticism, and historical and social context, etc. Yet little attention has been paid to Woolf's preoccupation with the embodiment of her aesthetic ideas in her novel writing. Although aestheticism only covers part of the critical approach to the interpretation of the novel, it still helps a lot in deepening readers'understanding on Woolf's unique perception on life and her original insight in fictional experiment. Therefore, this paper tends to dig out the aesthetic ideas embodied in To the Lighthouse and to examine how these ideas are adopted in the composition of the novel as attempts for formal and aesthetic experiment.The Introduction first gives the general information about Virginia Woolf and her work especially the novel To the Lighthouse. Then, attention is paid to the examination of Woolf's aesthetic belief and its embodiment in To the Lighthouse. The following three chapters cover a detailed analysis of the aesthetic ideas embodied in the novel.Chapter One focuses on the aesthetic theme which reflects Woolf's meditation on the relationship between art and life. Based on the aesthetic codes put forward by Aesthetic Movement and Bloomsbury Group, Woolf declares her own distinctive understanding by placing art and life in a dialectical relationship of interdependence.Chapter Two exams the aesthetic form which is characterized by the poetic attributes displayed in the novel mainly from three aspects: the employment of symbol and imagery, the application of metrical language and the use of the allusion to Grimm's fairy tale. These aspects combine to contribute to the poetic and romantic traits of the novel so as to help associate it with a work of poem both in form and style, which hence engenders both a sense of formal beauty and novelty.Chapter Three demonstrates the aesthetic technique adopted in the novel writing, which lies in the abundant use of the characteristic Post-Impressionist color and light for character development, thematic presentation and structural organization as well as aesthetic appreciation. The literary Post-Impressionist technique displays Woolf's revolutionary attempt to pattern her literary experiments in parallel with visual arts.The Conclusion summarizes the above-mentioned aesthetic ideas embodied in To the Lighthouse, and further analyzes the foresights and limitations concerning Woolf's application of these ideas in her novel writing.