An Interpretation Of To The Lighthouse From Spatial Narrative Perspective

Highly poetic and densely allusive,To the Lighthouse is generally acknowledged as British modernist Virginia Woolf's masterpiece.It incorporates her mastery of narrative skills in the artistic creation of the novel,which is a good starting point for exploring Woolf's works.Currently,domestic and foreign scholars' researches on this work mainly focus on the analysis of character,the relationship between characters,narrative structure,and stream-of-consciousness skills from the perspectives of feminism,ecological aesthetics,androgyny,and cognitive poetics.In recent years,affected by the “spatial turn” in the field of humanities and social sciences,the space art of the novel has begun to attract the attention of critics.However,there are few detailed explanations of the text from the perspective of the spatial narrative.Thus,this paper attempts to take some supplements.As a model of stream-of-consciousness,in addition to time,space also plays a vital role in To the Lighthouse.Based on relevant theories of spatial narrative,this thesis attempts to embody the concept of “spatial narrative” as a paradigm to expound the narrative art of space in To the Lighthouse from four aspects: the narrative of physical space,mental space,social space,and textual space.The first chapter discusses the construction of a narrative frame from the physical space by illustrating two objects,including the lighthouse and the summer house.The second chapter analyzes the mental space of two female characters,the social artist Mrs.Ramsay and the painter Lily Briscoe,and discusses the construction process of their self-identity.It displays subtle changes in the complicated psychology with the skill of inner consciousness,which reveals Woolf's thoughts about the relationship between self and others,self and society.It emphasizes the unity of life and art by two female characters in different ways.The third chapter is the social space,which mainly devotes to reflecting the relations between female and male,different generations in the Victorian era,and further recurring the theme of unity and harmony in the novel.The last chapter explores the construction of textual space in To the Lighthouse.The author presents the text with a spatial effect through the selection of point of view,the juxtaposition of the plot,and then concludes the recurring theme of unity in conflicts through the whole novel.The significance of this thesis is to break through the research structure of linear narrative,analyze the significance of space for the novel's narrative and unique expression effects from different spatial dimensions,explore the subversion of its spatial characteristics to the literary narrative tradition,and further provide a reference for understanding Woolf's other works from the perspective of the spatial narrative.