Visual Evocation In Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthousehe

Virginia Woolf(1882-1941) is one of the most prominent novelists, essayists and critics in Britain during the early 20 th century. Her novels are characterized by exquisiteness in style and truth in speech. Scholars, at home or aboard have been continuously focusing on Woolf’s novels, essays as well as her diaries. For the past few years, To the Lighthouse has been the subject of psychoanalytic, feminist, realist, aesthetic criticisms and many critics laid emphasis on the stream-of-consciousness, narration and art form. Obviously To the Lighthouse is an autobiographical novel which truthfully reflects her childhood and recalls her deceased parents. Woolf attempts to display the personal life experience by means of poetic language, thus making the novel as poem in picture, or vice versa.Recently the studies of To the Lighthouse vary. Although many critics detailedly make research and interpretation from specific regard, little attention has been paid to Woolf’s holistic view toward life and art in the angle of visual art. Thinking is bound by language, while language is the cage for vision. As the narrative strategy, visual art evocation namely visual imagination of words’ description endows the interpretation of the novel with a new perspective to touch the deep hearts of the readers and deliver the truth of life through the visual impact, sensibility and intellectuality. The thesis attempts to employ visual evocation and visual metaphor to analyze the visual art’s influence and significance toward Woolf’s creation of To the Lighthouse. Post-impressionist painting factors that Woolf uses exert influence not only on her approach to express the theme, but also on her artistic view’s forming. So much so that the inner relation between visual art and literature from a new respect and the theme of the novel evocated from visual art are sublimated to confirm Woolf’s attitude toward life and art ——life is truth, truth is life. Admittedly, through Woolf’s successful combination of visual art and novel writing, the holistic visual aesthetic effect can be achieved. Therefore, the thesis opens up a new space and approach on the interdisciplinary research on Woolf’s works, and also has impact on us to intensify our depth of understanding and cultivate new ideas.