As one of the most prominent literary figures of the 20thC,she is widely admired for her technical innovations in the novel, most notably her development of n

arrative subjectivity.

—— 《 Virginia Woolf ： Her writing of silence in To The Lighthouse 》 CNKI

Rejecting the boundaries of traditional European narrative form, （ what she called the

“materialism” novelists ） which she believes had become too artificial and restrictive for increasingly poetic, impressio‘nistic （印象派

的，印象主义的） renderings （演绎） of life, Woolf is constantly attempting to produce the novels in

her own distinctive narrative style.—— 《 Virginia Woolf ： Her writing of silence in To The Lighthouse 》 CNK

I

She is…

ModernistFeminist

Bloomsbury Group Follow the inner lives and musings/meditations of her char

actersProbe into mind of peopleValues of love and beauty: preeminent/outstanding

Traditional novel VS Modern novel An entertainment for after-dinner read

ing Su’perfluous 多余的 things Moralizing the dear reader Presenting only one-sided view of life Plot Character (externals of personality)

Evolved as a serious art form Compact in body, integrated in form Em’bodies the writer’s philosophy of life,

view of the world Deals with all facts of contemporary life

pleasant as well as the unpleasant David Daiches”The Plot seems to have

died out of the modern novel.””a story without ending”

In’ternal Modern psychological theory:

Life is not regarded as a continuous flow, but as a series of separate and successive moments.

Modern writers:

Probe deeper and deeper into the human consciousness and move so freely backward and forward in time that the unity and place has no meaning or significance for them.

The stream of consciousness 《 The Mark on the Wall 》 《 To the Lighthouse 》

Poetic presentational techniques 《 To the Lighthouse 》

The formal use of silence 《 To the Lighthouse 》

The stream of consciousness Every definite image in the mind is stepped and dyed

染色 in the free water that flows round it.The significance,the value of the image is all in this halo 晕 or penumbra 半明半暗之处，边缘部分 that surrounds and ‘escorts it.Consciousness,then,does not appear to itself chopped up in bits.Such word as”chains”or”trains”do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance…It is nothing jointed;it flows.A’river’or a’stream’is the better metaphor by which it is most naturally described.In talking of it hereafter 将来，来世 ,let us call it the steam of thought,of consciousness,or of subjective life.

William James The Principle of Psychology(1950)

The stream of consciousness to describe the unbroken flow of thought and awar

eness in the waking mind; it has since been adopted to describe a narrative method in modern fiction. Long passages of introspection( 反省 ), describing in some detail what passes through a character’s mind

the continuous flow of a character’s mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random （任意的，随机的） associations

Stream of consciousness (narrative mode)

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to por’tray an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent （等价物） of the character‘s thought processes, either in a loose interior内部的 monologue, or in connection to his or her actions. The introduction of the term to describe literature—transferred from psychology—is attributed to May Sinclair, and is mostly a dead metaphor.

---Wikipedia

Features Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually r

egarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose 散文 difficult to follow, tracing a character's fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings.

Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, and is used chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker’s thought processes are more often depicted 描绘 as overheard 无意中听到 in the mind (or addressed to oneself) and is primarily a fictional device.

Her special features

Characters: not many; major roles, generally female, usu. mother Mrs. Dalloway Orlando

Various ways to depict the inner world of characters: symbolism, miniaturism( 缩影 ),imagery, metaphor…

Poetic, fluent To the Lighthouse

www.baidu.com 意识流小说

人物意识的流转方式多姿多彩。有限定于同一个人物的“单独型”（《墙上的斑点》《雅各布的房间》），有多种意识流混杂的“交叉型”（《达洛卫夫人》），有以一种意识流为纽带的“放射型”（《到灯塔去》），也有多股意识保持分流的“平行型”（《海浪》）。

www.baidu.com 意识流小说

Poetic presentational techniques

Virginia Woolf, is a poet in nature who produces pro’lific 多产的 fictions.---E. M. Foster

She uses a variety of techniques including images, metaphor, and symbol to fulfill her poetic fiction theory.

The fiction is not only to be just poetic, but a long “psychological poem”.

The formal use of silence

lead her to create new representations of mind and self.

Traditionally: an absence in lifeWoolf’s novels: as a presence, infus

ed 注入with a new psychic and narrative life.

Different types of silence Her thematic and philosophical

expression of silence, possesses the inherent complexities of her many themes, reveals her modernistic ideas about novel, vision of gender ,particularly, of women ,a worldview, and also her notion of language to express silence.