Virginia Woolf's The Waves And English Romantic Poems

The Waves is always regarded as the most experimental and poetic novel of all Virginia Woolf's works.The Waves,very different from conventional narrative novels,has neither a main plot nor a full-scale description of the hero.It possesses highly abstract,emotional and philosophical characteristics.Although the novel is generally defined within modernism,it also has its own unmatched style in consideration of its poetic language and the natural scenes depicted in it.The unique writing style of The Waves has aroused many critics' interests.However,few people realized the possible connection between English Romantic poems and the novel.By analyzing Virginia Woolf's creative quotations of English Romantic poems and her poetic writing techniques in The Waves,the thesis intends to reveal the impact of English Romantic poems on Virginia Woolf when she was writing The Waves.In The Waves,Virginia Woolf quoted lines from the poems of many English Romantic poets,like William Wordsworth,Percy Bysshe Shelley,Lord Byron and etc.In the terms of the motif of novel,Virginia Woolf shared the same topics with those of English Romantic poets,like the motifs in Wordsworth's The Prelude,Shelley's Adonais and Arnold's Thyrsis and Lord Byron's works to poetically demonstrate the characters' experiences and reflections of life.In terms of the descriptive methods,she used the ones which were used by Romantic poets when they depicted the scenes,like the descriptions about colors,light and shadow,the rhythm and tone of voice,so as to strengthen the imagery and to inspire the intuitive senses.In terms of the writing skills,Virginia Woolf substituted the soliloquies of the characters for the plot,to present human emotion to the maximum extent.In the meanwhile,she also arrayed six characters,by synchronously giving them voices,emphasizing the commonness of human beings and keeping up to the "organic unity" of the novel.In The Waves,Virginia Woolf integrated English Romantic poems into her modernist writing,which helps to achieve her innovation and creation.