A Historiographic Layering:Metafictional Reading Of The Hours

This thesis analyzes Michael Cunningham’s The Hours via the critical perspective of historiographic metafiction. It sees into parody and juxtaposition of different historical contexts as Cunningham’s experimental writing trials, revealing his profound concern for women’s psychological oppression. Historiographic metafiction, the critical baseline is firstly rendered, which provides a critical decoding of The Hours, a work formed by its intrinsic autonomy as well as intertextual layering. Cunningham’s parody takes effect via altering the narrative structure, changing the meaning of party and remolding the image of Mrs. Dalloway, triggering our reflection on history and reality. Inventively, the insertion of historical personage and juxtaposition of different historical contexts form the parallelism between heroines of different social status and ideology. Hence we see clearly their inescapability of psychological oppression in spite of variation of the time, and the gradual modification of female consciousness through time. Cunningham’s sympathy with women’s struggle between dream and reality, and his profound reflection on the future of women is highly esteemed throughout the case study.