The Historicity Of Texts And The Textuality Of Histories-A Study On Virginia Woolf’s New Biography From The Perspective Of New Historicism

Full of the experimental and revolutionary spirit in writing,“new biography” is Virginia Woolf’s new literary attempt.She used “the perpetual marriage of granite and rainbow” to describe the “new biography” because it is endowed with both the features of granite’s solidity and the rainbow’s fantasy and unpredictability.Orlando:A Biography,Flush: A Biography and Friendships Gallery are the representatives of her “new biography”.The thesis intends to analyze Virginia Woolf’s “new biography” from the perspective of New Historicism.Historicity and textuality are two importants concepts in the criticism of New Historicism.History and text interacts with each other,and it embodies in the historicity of texts and textuality of histories.The historicity of texts means that the literary texts are social and historical products.Also,the literary texts have the functions of influencing the social and history development.And,for the textuality of history,it means that the history is recorded by texts with the subjective preference of its authors.The thesis argues that the historicity of the texts is embedded in the form,the prototypes of biographees and other historical materials of the “new biography”.Firstly,it takes the standard and scientific form of traditional biography on the surface.Secondly,the prototypes of biographees have their historical origins.Lastly,the historical materials like historical events,lifestyles and fashion trends are shown in the “new biography”.Moreover,the textuality of histories is demonstrated in the form,the textualized histories,the descriptions of multiple histories and nonlinear sequence in the history in Woolf’s “new biography”.Firstly,although Woolf’s “new biography” takes the form of standard form of traditional biography,it mocks the form by claiming to lost historical references.Secondly,it employs the writing techniques of novels to textualize the histories.Thirdly,it focuses on describing the biographees’ trifles in daily life and their psychological state.Lastly,it utilizes the nonlinear sequence in history to provide readers more possibilities to interpret the texts.The historicity and textuality interact with each other in Woolf’s “new biography”in the way that the historicity echoes in the texts and the textuality of literary works helps shape the social ideologies and history.“New biography” is innovative.It satirizes the traditional historical texts in its textuality and traditional biography in its historicity.It embodies Woolf’s rebellious spirits to literary tradition and it also contains the social energy of the writers and biographees.In all,Virginia Woolf creatively combines the historicity of texts and textuality of histories perfectly in her “new biography”.