Modern Woolfian Fiction

2021 ◽  
pp. 535-552
Author(s):  
Roxana Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Michael Cunningham ◽  
Intellectual Control ◽  
New Form ◽  
Novel Of Manners ◽  
Ian Mcewan ◽  
Zadie Smith ◽  
Domestic Setting

Virginia Woolf radically transformed the novel of manners, a form defined by a domestic setting, limited emotional range, and the centrality of social codes. Woolf expanded this to include the whole range of human experience, partly through the use of shifting interior voices who meditate on art, marriage, grief, love, ambition, empire, gender, and the sea. With one long beautiful narrative sweep, Woolf turned the novel of manners into a novel of ideas. This expansion has had a profound effect on subsequent novelists such as Ian McEwan, Rachel Cusk, Michael Cunningham, Zadie Smith, Tessa Hadley, and the author of this chapter. These writers have used domestic settings and interior voices to write about the whole of life, laying claim to Woolf’s powerful and elastic new form, the novel-of-both-manners-and-ideas. This chapter examines works by these writers to show how Woolf’s luminous prose and deep empathy, her intellectual control and literary potency, continue to illuminate and vivify the contemporary novel.

scholarly journals IHAB HASSAN POSTMODERNISM’S INDETERMINACY AND IRONY:LAURA BROWN’S INNER CONFLICT IN THE HOURS

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-182
Author(s):  
Rina Wahyu Setyaningrum
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Michael Cunningham ◽  
The Hours ◽  
Good Wife

Virginia Woolf is one of the modernist writers who write Mrs. Dalloway for which Michael Cunningham has taken Virginia’s life story into his novel, The Hours that characterized Laura Brown who reads Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham’s literary work which foregrounds the uncertainty of sexual orientation, confusion, and difficulty of identity is suitable with postmodernism’s conventions and is valid in both Woolf's and Cunningham's novels. There have been studies conducted by the scholars in terms of various technical aspects, such as narrative, design, and structure. The other topics comprise the equivalence of characters, the parallelism of scenes, and the borrowing of themes and symbolism, in order to demonstrate the effects of the adaptation process. This paper focuses on Laura Brown’s inner conflicts which are connected to postmodernism features. From the quotations in the novel, this paper showcases the novel’s analysis based on Ihab Hassan’s theory of postmodernism’s indeterminacy and irony. It is found that Laura Brown’s inner conflicts are shown from her efforts of being a good wife for Dan. She is trying hard to answer her own question whether or not she loves her husband. Ironically, the perfect status of being a wife of a soldier who takes part in winning the World War II, a woman with a perfect family, as well as a woman living a good life, do not make her happy. Mrs. Dalloway has inspired her to find her true happiness, her former self that has disappeared.

Critical Modesty in Contemporary Fiction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thom Dancer
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
The World ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ian Mcewan ◽  
Zadie Smith

From climate catastrophe to pandemics and economic crises, the problems facing humanity today are impossibly complicated and planetary in scale. Critical Modesty in Contemporary Fiction makes the surprising but compelling claim that it is precisely by culitvating a modest temperament that contemporary fiction can play an central role in conbating the despair that many of us feel in the face of such enormous and intractable problems. This new temperament of critical modesty locates the fight for freedom and human dignity within the limited and compromised conditions in which we find ourselves. Through readings of Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, J. M. Coetzee, and David Mitchell, Critical Modesty in Contemporary Fiction shows us how contemporary works of literature model modesty as a critical temperament. Exploring modest forms of entangled human agency that represent an alternative to the novel of the large scale that have been most closely associated with the Anthropocene, Dancer builds a case that the novel has the potential to play a more important socio-cultural role than it has done. In doing so, the book offers an engaging response to the debate over post-critical and surface readings, bringing novels themselves into the conversation and arguing for a fictional mode that is both critical and modest, reminding us how much we are already engaged with the world, implicated and compromised, before we start developing theories, writing stories, or acting within it.

scholarly journals Quem é Shar em Nw e suas traduções para o português? Um estudo da representação da personagem baseado em valores atitudinais

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-346
Author(s):  
Taís Paulilo Blauth ◽  
Célia Maria Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Original Text ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Appraisal System ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Semantic Variation ◽  
Zadie Smith

This paper draws on the Martinian interpretation of Systemic Functional Grammar (MARTIN 1992, MARTIN; ROSE 2007) to approach translation as interlingual reinstantiation (SOUZA, 2010), from an interpersonal stance. The goal of this investigation is to examine the representation of a character of the novel in the original text and its translations to cast light on the implications of semantic variation for reader positioning. The analysis is based on the Appraisal system (MARTIN; WHITE 2005) and the text chosen for this investigation is an excerpt of a chapter of British contemporary novel NW by Zadie Smith (2012), along with its Brazilian and Portuguese translations. The analysis shows greater and lesser variations, most of loading or polarity, in attitudes associated with the character.

Identifying Ethics: Dysfunction as Representation of Societal Relationship in Ian McEwans’s Sweet Tooth

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
A. Yacob ◽  
S. Veeramani
Keyword(s):  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Code ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Ian Mcewan

In the novel, Sweet Tooth, McEwan has employed an ethical code of conduct called, Dysfunction of Relationship. The analysis shows that he tries to convey something extraordinary to the readers. If it is not even the reader to understand such a typical thing, He himself represents a new ethical code of conduct. The character of the novel, Serena is almost a person who is tuned to such a distinct one. It is clear that the character of this type is purely representational. Understanding reality based on situation and ethics has been a new field of study in terms of Post- Theory. Intervening to such aspect of Interpretation, this research article establishes a new study in the writings of Ian McEwan. In the novel, Dysfunction is not on the ‘Self’ but it is on the ‘Other’. The author tries to integrate the function of the Character Serena, instead of fragmenting the self. Hence, Fragmentation makes sense only in the dysfunction of relationship.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Brazil
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Zadie Smith

In conclusion, this short chapter surveys the ways in which the novelists discussed in this book have become reference points for contemporary debates about the legacy of modernism and experimentation among novelists such as Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and Ben Lerner. It also surveys how contemporary novelists’ engagements with art are being driven by different concerns than those of earlier writers—attempts to blur the lines between autobiography and fiction, or to recover the political and aesthetic potential of wonder and enchantment. In doing so, it shows how the interactions between art and the novel traced in this book have become part of literary history.

Marivaux's Place in the Development of Character Portrayal

PMLA ◽  
1912 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
Edward Chauncey Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Modern Novel ◽  
New Form ◽  
Continuous Narrative

When in 1710-11 the Sir Roger de Coverley papers appeared in the Spectator, the art of the novel seemed to have been discovered. The wonder is that people did not sooner awaken to a realization that a new form of art had been created. The faithful description of life and manners was there, the interest of character and incident was also present. The essays needed but to have been thrown into the form of a continuous narrative to have given us at least the germ of the modern novel. As a matter of fact, however, the actual appearance of the novel was delayed for nearly three decades.

scholarly journals 'Always think of the objects': Ekphrasis as aesthetics in the contemporary novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Eleanor Alston
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Temporal Qualities

<p>It is a commonplace that ekphrasis – the description in literature of a visual work of art – brings to the fore questions of representation and reference. Such questions are particularly associated with the ‘postmodern’; ekphrasis is thus often subsumed under the category of metafiction. There has been little critical attention, however, to how the ekphrastic mode might be understood in aesthetic terms. This thesis considers the nature of ekphrasis’s referential capacity, but expands on this to suggest a number of ways in which the ekphrastic mode evinces the aesthetic and ontological assumptions upon which a text is predicated. Two case studies illustrate how the ekphrastic mode can be figured to different effect. In comparing these two novels, this thesis argues that the ekphrastic mode makes clear the particular subject-object relations expressed by each. If Lukács is correct in asserting that the novel mode expresses a discrepancy between ‘the conventionality of the objective world and the interiority of the subjective one’, ekphrasis provides a fruitful but under-explored avenue for critical inquiry because, as a mode, it is situated at the point at which subject and object must converge. The first chapter of this thesis is concerned with Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), a novel that includes both traditional ekphrastic descriptions and embedded photographs and references to critical theory that function ekphrastically. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) provides a contrast: the novel makes continued reference to film – a medium defined by its temporal qualities – but as used in the novel the ekphrastic mode implies a fixed, ahistorical schema. The implications that such differences have on the novel mode and critical discourse are explored in the final section of the thesis.</p>

scholarly journals Quando o silêncio narra o que aconteceu: a morte em "To the Lighthouse"

Scriptorium ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33180
Author(s):  
Adriana Madeira Coutinho
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Empirical Perspective ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Concrete Reality

Este artigo reflete sobre a condição humana e seu fim último, a morte, através do romance “To the Lighthouse”, de Virginia Woolf, em que a narrativa se desenvolve na relação entre a vida e a morte. Nas três partes do romance os acontecimentos giram em torno da morte, não só da morte física mas também de uma morte simbólica. Para tanto são apontadas algumas observações sobre subjetivismo e realidade objetiva, sobre temporalidade e sobre a própria prosa moderna nas formulações de Erich Auerbach. Em uma perspectiva empírica a autora aproxima o romance de sua realidade concreta, desnuda a dificuldade da escrita após um evento traumático além de apresentar aos leitores a fragilidade humana diante do inesperado. O presente trabalho foi realizado com apoio da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) - Código de Financiamento 001.  *** When silence tells what happened: death in "To the Lighthouse" ***This article reflects on the human condition and its ultimate end, death, through Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse," where the narrative unfolds in the relationship between life and death. In the three parts of the novel, events revolve around death, not only physical death but also a symbolic death. To this end, some observations on subjectivism and objective reality, on temporality, and on modern prose itself in the formulations of Erich Auerbach are pointed out. In an empirical perspective, the author brings the novel closer to its concrete reality, exposes the difficulty of writing after a traumatic event, as well as presenting the human frailty before the unexpected. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.Keywords: Virginia Woolf; Death; Human condition; Literary criticism.

THE CONCEPT OF CHRONOTOPE IN THE NOVEL “MRS DALLOWAY” BY V. WOOLF

2020 ◽  
Vol XIII (XIII) ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
E.Yu. Makarova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Continuous Sampling ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Modern Era

This article deals with the concept of chronotope in the text of the novel "Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf. Certain characteristics of chronotope exemplifying these concepts were selected and analyzed, the former serving as an integral part of the analysis of works of the modern era. As a result of a continuous sampling and subsequent analysis of the text of the novel, we concluded that despite the contrast of the characters from different social classes, they are united by a single spatio-temporal continuum regulated by the chronotope. Virginia Woolf managed to accurately and truthfully convey the atmosphere of 1923, as she was a direct witness to the events taking place in the country and the world at that time.

The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Students ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Many ◽  
Hogarth Press

With thirty-nine original chapters from internationally prominent scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf is designed for post-secondary students, scholars, and common readers. Feminist to the core, each chapter offers an overview that is at once fresh and thoroughly grounded in prior scholarship. Six parts focus on Woolf’s life, her texts, her experiments, her as a professional, her contexts, and her afterlife. Opening chapters on Woolf’s life address the powerful influences of family, friends, and home. Part II on her works moves chronologically, emphasizing Woolf’s practice of writing essays and reviews alongside her fiction. Chapters on Woolf’s experimentalism pay special attention to the literariness of Woolf’s writing, with opportunity to trace its distinctive watermark while ‘Professions of Writing’, invites readers to consider how Woolf worked in cultural fields including and extending beyond the Hogarth Press and the Times Literary Supplement. Part V on ‘Contexts’ moves beyond writing to depict her engagement with the natural world as well as the political, artistic, and popular culture of her time. The final part, ‘Afterlives’, demonstrates the many ways Woolf’s reputation continues to grow. Of particular note, chapters explore three distinct Woolfian traditions in fiction: the novel of manners, magical realism, and the feminist novel.

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