Dissertation Abstract
"This Appalling Narrative Business:" Virginia
Woolf and the Conventions of Realism
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This study places Virginia Woolf's narrative experimentation
in the context of her rebellion against the conventions of nineteenth-century
realism. Using a wide variety of contemporary critical approaches (including
post-structuralist, French feminist and psychoanalytic perspectives), this
dissertation contrasts the narrative discourse in the classic realist text
with Virginia Woolf's idiosyncratic narrative style, focusing on the ideological
and epistemological foundations of each. The comparison clarifies the aesthetic
and political ramifications of Woolf's narrative experimentation. Each
of the six chapters focuses on Woolf's deviation from a specific element
of classic realism. Thus, while each chapter could potentially be an individual
article, each chapter also ads a necessary dimension to the over-all study
of Woolf's multifaceted reaction against the conventions of nineteenth-century
realism.
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Chapter one, "Woolf and the Phases of Fiction," places
Woolf's narrative experimentation in the context of the history of the
novel and the realistic tradition. Using her essay "Phases of Fiction"
as a guide, many of Woolf's innovations are revealed to be a result of
her conscious combination of elements from previous "phases" of the novel,
revealing the close ties between Woolf's reactionary impulses and conventional
techniques. In addition, because of her reactions against classic realism,
many of her narrative innovations are directly determined by the conventions
of classic realism.
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Chapter two, "The Character and the Epitaph: Jacob's Room
and Conventional Narration," portrays Jacob's Room as Woolf's explicit
rebellion against the narrative strategies of classic realism. In Jacob's
Room Woolf employs conventional realistic elements in a parodic manner
in order to subvert the conventional stability and closure of classic realistic
novels. Through an elusive main character, shifting narrative perspectives,
and a parody of the linear, cumulative development of the Bildungsroman,
Woolf exposes the workings of narrative strategies, revealing the instability
and indeterminacy concealed in conventional narration.
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Chapter three, "'The Fabric of Things:' Woolf, Detail
and Reality," and chapter four, "'An epitome as well as an inventory:'
Woolf' s Poetic Prose" examine Woolf's metaphorical prose. Using the metaphoric
and metonymic poles in narrative discourse discussed by Roman Jakobson
and Hayden White, Woolf's use of detail is contrasted to that of classic
realism. While conventional realism is predominately metonymic, Woolf combines
metaphor with metonymy--producing lyrical prose. In chapter three, the
conception of reality presented in the metonymic "fabric" of classic realism
is contrasted to the vision of reality Woolf conveys through combining
metaphor and metonymy. Chapter four provides detailed analyses of the narrative
styles of Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, The Waves, and The Years, focusing
specifically on Woolf's different approaches to combining metaphor and
metonymy.
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Chapter five, which has recently been accepted for publication
by Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, is entitled "Desire,
Death and Plot: The Subversive Play of Orlando." It deals with Woolf's
playful deviation from the conventional uses of narrative desire. Using
the works of Leo Bersani and Peter Brooks, this chapter explores the function
of narrative desire in the formation of character and in the development
of plot, revealing that Woolf's experimentation with narrative desire produces
a de-centered subject and a non-linear plot in Orlando.
Chapter
six "Power, Society and Narrative Discourse: Woolf and the Foucauldian
Intellectual," compares Woolf's political agenda with Michel Foucault's.
In Three Guineas Woolf's analysis of the power structure of her society
is astonishingly similar to a Foucauldian genealogy, revealing Woolf's
sensitivity to domestic and local sites of power. For Woolf, one such site
of power is literature, and in her fiction she dismantles the power hegemony
in novelistic discourse, fulfilling Foucault's criteria for the 'specific'
intellectual. Sections of this chapter were presented at the International
Virginia Woolf Conference in June of 1993.
©Dr. Michael R. Olin-Hitt
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