Writing Style Of Virginia Woolf

2. 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 narrative
subjectivity.
——《Virginia Woolf：Her writing of silence in To The Lighthouse》 CNKI

3. 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》
CNKI

4. She is…
Modernist
Feminist
Bloomsbury Group
Follow the inner lives and musings/meditations of her
characters
Probe into mind of people
Values of love and beauty: preeminent/outstanding

5. Traditional novel VS Modern novel
An entertainment for after-dinner
reading
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.

6. 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》

7. 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)

8. The stream of consciousness
to describe the unbroken flow of thought and
awareness 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 mindm
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

9. 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

10. Features
Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually
regarded 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.

11. 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.

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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”.

15. The formal use of silence
lead her to create new
representations of mind and self.
Traditionally: an absence in life
Woolf’s novels: as a presence,
infused 注入with a new psychic and
narrative life.

16. 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.