Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 Criticism and interpretation'

The questions posed and examined in Violent Femmes take their genesis from psychoanalytic arguments which contend that identity is not a stable monadic thing but rather a continuing process of engagement and negotiation between the self and others. Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, and Christopher Bollas, amongst others, have noted the temporary, coalitional, and provisional nature of the ways in which identity is apprehended and experienced. This thesis expands upon such a theoretical framework of identity formation to specifically question the ways in which the formation and maturation of an artistic identity may, in part, be predicated upon the psychological capacity to enact violence within the realm of the imaginary. Violent Femmes examines the complex relationship between psychological violence and artistic identity as that relationship is recorded in the autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, and Emily Carr.<br>This project traces the written vestiges of Woolfs, Hall's, and Carr's individual internalised struggles to formulate an artistic identity in specific relationship with an already established 'model' of artistic creativity and identity. Woolfs, Hall's, and Carr's struggles to claim a personal artistic identity, in some ways from their individual model of the artist, are waged within the minds of the authors themselves. However, the violence enacted within their imaginations---the violence perpetrated against the models of the artist---is thrust into the external world, not only within the writings of these three women, but also by the ways in which each author resolves or fails to resolve her own violent conflict with her imaginary model of the artist.

This thesis will suggest how Woolf scholarship's rich exploration of Virginia Woolf's representations of girls, women and femininities may be complemented by more systematic feminist study of constructs of masculinities, as they appear in her work. Elaborating the concept of the ‘private brother', the figure of a form of maleness that the daughters of educated men ‘have reason to respect', but that Three Guineas' narrator stipulates is ‘sunk' by men's exposure to society and replaced by the ‘monstrous male', my thesis will focus particularly on the representations of boys, men and masculinities in To the Lighthouse, Between the Acts and Woolf's biography Roger Fry, though I will additionally use material from Woolf's essays, diaries and letters, as well as from Mrs Dalloway, The Years and The Pargiters. The first section of my thesis will supplement feminist critiques of the education received by upper-middle-class English boys in Woolf's texts by exploring her representations of young male (inter)subjectivities in the process of being ‘sunk.' In the second section, I will complicate the narrative trajectories often indicated for these characters in Woolf criticism by proposing that Woolf understood this sinking process as always incomplete: I will argue that Woolf's adult male characters, even her patriarchs, professors and otherwise educated men, vacillate continually between stances that might be characterised as monstrous maleness and private brotherliness–in both ‘public' and intimate settings–as one of the preconditions of social existence.

This thesis argues that tasting appears as an act of creative empathy and of knowledge acquisition in Virginia Woolf's writing. First contextualising my discussion within Woolf's own reading of the aesthetic and literary history of ‘taste', I then use Cixous' essay ‘Extreme Fidelity' (renamed ‘The Author in Truth') as a theoretical entryway to passages from The Voyage Out, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando which centralise the role of gustatory pleasure in creativity and epistemology. Cixous elaborates an oral, ‘poetic' and feminine ontology rooted in a receptivity to sensual pleasure, a concept that assists my reading of Woolf in several aspects. I suggest that in Woolf, both literal and figurative experiences of taste contribute to physical and psychic repletion, consequently eliciting empathy with the other (Cixous' term). This empathy which originates in the body constitutes an epistemological source distinct from intellectual or emotional intelligences, but one equally integral to the creative process. I assert that empathy features in Woolf as an extension or enlargement of the imagination through which a subject incorporates knowledge of alterity, but without consuming the other - as in the act of tasting. This ideation differs from notions of empathy as an analogical mapping or projection of self onto other. I discuss the ways in which a ‘gustatory epistemology' informs Woolf's approach to her craft, shapes the interrelationships of her characters, and materialises stylistically in her development of a ‘poetic' prose language.

Solitude and self have been common topics for discussion and scrutiny by philosophers, scholars and writers. However, it was not until the turn of the twentieth century, with women 's enlightenment, that one notices women writers ' interest in understanding their selves in moments of solitude. Women who were conscious of drastic social changes often examined their lives and explored their selves in solitude. Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf represent women writers of their time who shared a common interest in portraying women's quests for self in solitude. The present study shows how the solitary state is a significant precondition for modern women to reflect on their lives or explore their selves at a time when society was undergoing drastic changes. A close study of Katherine Mansfield 's "Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding" (19 l 0), "Kezia and Tui" (1916), "Prelude" ( 1918), "At the Bay" ( 1922), and "All Serene!" (1923) shows that Mansfield always offers her women characters punitive consequences in the endings because of their compromise with their mundane conditions even though they have gained some sense of the self through contemplation and meditation. In the case of Virginia Woolf, she situates her women characters in isolation and contemplation, and often presents her women characters as active seekers of self through meditation and alienation. Autonomy, authenticity, and vision define these women's emerging self in such novels as Night and Day ( 1919), Orlando ( 1928), and To the Lighthouse ( 1927). The present study reveals Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf as two exemplary women writers who examine women in moments of solitude through the interplay of social and psychological reality. Solitude is a recurrent condition and theme in their fiction that is often presented in "contrapuntal" manner (Dunbar ix). The contrast between women 's public and performative existence and their private and unmasked self characterises the fiction of Mansfield and Woolf, allowing the two writers to examine patriarchal oppression of women's acquisition of self against the backdrop of modernity. Mansfield and Woolf's treatment of solitude is particularly important as it sheds light on their shared views and friendship. Solitude is treated as a critical state, a condition, a private space, an attitude, or a refuge from performativity for women in their texts. Yet they have adopted distinct writing strategies in dealing with the subject owing to their difference in experience and literary outlook. Mansfield creates heroines who are more practical and modest in their approach to the subject of self-construction. Woolf creates women characters who often resort consciously to solitude to challenge and reflect upon gender norms, gain a better sense of their selves, and deploy various means to attain self-realisation.

This thesis offers an analysis of selected works by Virginia Woolf through the theoretical framework of technology of place. The term “technology”, meaning both a finished product and an ongoing production process, a mode of concealment and unconcealment in Martin Heidegger's sense, is used as part of this thesis's argument that place can be understood through constant negotiations of concrete place perceived through the senses, a concept based on the Heideggerian notion of “earth”, and abstract place perceived in the imagination, a concept based on the Heideggerian notion of “world”. The term “technology of place”, coined by Irvin C. Schick in The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse (1999), is appropriated and re-interpreted as part of this thesis's adoption and adaptation of Woolf's notion of ideal biographical writing as an amalgamation of “granite” biographical facts and “rainbow” internal life. Woolf's granite and rainbow dichotomy is used as a foreground to this thesis's proposed theoretical framework, through which questions of space/place can be examined. My analysis of Flush (1933) demonstrates that place is a technology which can be taken at face value and, at the same time, appropriated to challenge the ideology of its construction. My analysis of Orlando (1928) demonstrates that Woolf's idea of utopia exemplifies the technological “coming together”, in Heidegger's term, of concrete social reality and abstract artistic fantasy. My analysis of The Years (1937) demonstrates that sense of place as well as sense of identity is ambivalent and constantly changing like the weather, reflecting place's Janus-faced function as both concealment and unconcealment. Lastly, my analysis of Woolf's selected essays and marginalia illustrates that writing can serve as a revolutionary “place-making” technology through which one can mentally “make room” for (re-)imagining the lives of “the obscure”, often placed in oblivion throughout the course of history.

Thesis (MA VA (Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The primary function of paintings and novels in Western culture has historically been considered the depiction or description of reality. Over the course of the last century, however, the inherent reflexivity of both art and literature has become progressively more insistent and programmatic, in such a way as challenges the relationship between form and the world. A re-thinking of the role of representation is thus central to both modernism and postmodernism. This thesis is an investigation into the relationship between modern and postmodern reflexivity. Through the close examination of four artists who serve as case studies, I argue that literary and artistic modernism‟s emphasis on form and subjectivity, as well as the tendency of postmodern art and writing to flaunt its own status as rhetoric/fiction, are different facets of a continuous response to a rapidly changing world. Using the insights of post-structuralist theory, I suggest that whereas modernism‟s reflexive drive is directed towards truth and self-knowledge, postmodern reflexivity is centrally concerned with the elusive, continually shifting nature of meaning. What emerges in the light of the practice of individual artist and authors, however, is that the modern and postmodern reflexive modes are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but can co-exist, producing a vital and necessary tension.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Beskrywing en uitbeelding van die werklikheid word geskiedkundig as die kernfunksies van skilderye en die roman in die Westerse kultuur beskou. Gedurende die laaste eeu het die inherente refleksiwiteit van beide kuns en letterkunde toenemend meer programmaties en sistematies geword. Dit het geskied op „n wyse wat die verhouding tussen vorm en die wêreld uitdaag. „n Herbesinning van die rol van uitbeelding of representasie is gevolglik van sentrale belang vir beide modernisme en postmodernisme. Hierdie tesis is „n ondersoek na die verwantskap tussen moderne en postmoderne refleksiwiteit. Deur „n noukerige ondersoek van vier kunstenaars se werk, stel ek voor dat die letterkundige en artistieke klem van modernisme op vorm en subjektiwiteit, sowel as die gebruiklike kenmerk van retoriek/fiksie, verskillende aspekte is van „n voortdurende weerkaatsing op „n vinnig veranderende wêreld is. Deur die teoretiese perspektiewe van post-stukturalisme toe te pas, stel ek voor dat modernistiese refleksiwiteit neig na die waarheid en selfkennis, terwyl postmoderne refleksiwiteit fokus op die onbepaalde en veranderlike aard van betekenis. Nietemin, uit my kritiese beskouing van die kreatiewe praktyk van afsonderlike kunstenaars en skrywers blyk dit dat die modernistiese en postmodernistiese refleksiewe benaderinge nie noodwendig mekaar uitsluit nie, maar saam kan bestaan en „n dinamiese en noodsaaklike spanning skep.

Informada pelos pressupostos da área interdisciplinar conhecida como estudos animais, esta tese propõe uma leitura a contrapelo das figuras animais na literatura, na qual elas não são entendidas apenas como metáforas de certos aspectos da vida humana, mas como presenças textuais com um estatuto de personagens e, nessa condição, são interrogadas em sua alteridade. A questão central em pauta é: o que a metáfora diz sobre os animais e sobre a relação entre os animais e os seres humanos e o que significa des-figurar a metáfora e explorar a possibilidade de re-significar, a partir da textualidade ficcional, a relação humano-animal. Para tanto, desenho um panorama dos estudos animais, abordando o estado da arte no Brasil, inserindo tais estudos nas possibilidades de inovação no campo da literatura comparada. A seguir, elaboro um aporte teórico a partir da filosofia animal de Jacques Derrida, ao qual incorporo e coloco em discussão posicionamentos teóricos de Calarco (2008), Krell (2013), Lawlor (2007) e Naas (2010) sobre a questão em pauta. Por fim, realizo leituras comparadas entre A metamorfose (1915), de Franz Kafka, e Porcarias (1996), de Marie Darrieussecq, ambos sobre o tornar-se animal, e entre Flush (1933), de Virginia Woolf, e Timbuktu (1999), de Paul Auster, ambos sobre a domesticação de animais.<br>Following the tenets of the interdisciplinary area of animal studies, this dissertation presents a reading of animal figures in literature against the grain, which means that they are not taken only as metaphors of certain aspects of human life but as textual presences with a status assigned to characters and, in this condition, are interrogated in their alterity. The central question to be explored is: what the animal metaphor says about animals and the relation of animal and human beings and what it means to de-figure the metaphor in order to explore the possibility of re-signifying, in ficcional textualities, the human/animal relation. In order to address these issues, I draw a panorama of animal studies, including the state of the art in Brazil, to contend that this area adds to the possibilities of innovation in the field of comparative literature. Then, I consider a theoretical framework of Jacques Derrida’s animal philosophy, also discussing theoretical positions of Calarco (2008), Krell (2013), Lawlor (2007) and Naas (2010) on this topic. Finally, I propose comparative readings of Franz Kafka’s The metamorphosis (1915) and Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig tales (1996), from the perspective of becoming animal, and of Virginia Woolf’s Flush (1933) and Paul Auster’s Timbuktu (1999), both on domesticating animals.

Virginia Woolf wrote both prose and poetry, both fiction and non-fiction: she was both a creative writer and a politically conscious reporter. She left a wealth of beautifully crafted observations and comments that continue to be immensely quotable and influential. Feminist critics today use Woolf's vocabulary to continue the feminist conversation which she entered early in her life and consistently influenced as long as she lived and wrote. My purpose in this essay is to identify some of the ways in which feminists strategically use references to Virginia Woolf and A Room of One's Own to empower their own perspective or to develop legitimacy for their own knowledge and discourse.<br>Graduation date: 1992

by Wanda Wing Yi Tsui.<br>Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-101).<br>Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- Gender and Identity: Subjectivity in Women's Writing --- p.1<br>Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- The Androgynous Personality Celebrated in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse --- p.20<br>Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- The Inner Growth of the Female Characters in Wang Anyi's Stories --- p.53<br>Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- Female Identity: the Significance of Androgyny --- p.80<br>NOTES --- p.90<br>WORKS CITED --- p.92