Formalization Of Sensum Narrative In Virginia Woolf’s Fiction

The research on the narrative form of Virginia Woolf’s fiction is the focus of Woolf’s research circle.At present,relevant researches at home and abroad mainly discuss the significance of the narrative form of Woolf’s fiction in the fields of aesthetics,modernism,religion,feminism,Bloomsbury circles,trauma studies and psychiatry.In contrast,Woolf’s personal relationship between modern life and modern people’s sensum cognition has not yet received full attention.And this kind of attention has research value for revealing how and why Woolf formed a unique narrative form.For this reason,this article uses the perception theory of British empirical philosopher C.D.Broad as a theoretical approach to describe,analyze and evaluate the narrative form and its causes of the four fictions: Mrs.Dalloway,To the Lighthouse,Orlando: A Biography,and Between the Acts,in order to reveal how Woolf used a unique novel narrative form to present his personal perceptions of modern Western life and modern people.This thesis is composed of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction includes the research background,literature review about Woolf abroad and at home,methodology,and research questions.Among them,methodology focuses on sorting out the perception theory of British empiricist philosopher C.D.Broad and other theoretical conceptions and propositions related to this thesis.At the same time,it explains the reasons for choosing four Woolf’s fictions and the analysis methods of them.Main body consists of four chapters.The first chapter focuses on the formalization of sensum narrative in Mrs.Dalloway,trying to point out that Woolf uses the form of “dots” and “line” to present her sensum cognition of modern life with individual diversity and collective unity at the same time.The second chapter mainly discusses the formalization of sensum narrative in To the Lighthouse,trying to point out that Woolf uses the form of “H” and the form of “circle” to present her sensum cognition of modern life with both the dichotomized of sensibility and rationality and the unified of sensibility and rationality at the same time.The third chapter mainly analyzes the formalization of sensum narrative in Orlando: A Biography,trying to point out that Woolf uses the form of “body” and the form of “art” to present her sensum cognition of the finite and the infinite of modern life at the same time.The fourth chapter mainly discusses the formalization of the sensum narrative in Between the Acts,trying to point out that Woolf uses the form of “play” and the form of “sound” to present her sensum cognition about modern life with both the formalized and the chaotic at the same time.In the conclusion,this thesis points out that,on the one hand,Woolf uses a variety of fiction narrative forms in different fictions to express his own sensum cognition of modern Western life and modern people.On the other hand,these different fiction narrative forms together constitute Woolf’s overall sensum cognition.On the whole,the formalization of Woolf’s narrative is a cognitive process that revolves around the individual “I” of modern people,which consists of four links: from the concrete “ I ” to the abstract “ I ”,to the aesthetic “I”,and finally return to the concrete “I”.In Woolf’s fictions,the so-called modern life in the West is chaotic,which relies on the sensum cognition of the individual.