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To the Lighthouse

 
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ericcoliu[ericcoliu]
ericcoliu作品集

二品总督
(刚入二品,小心做人)
二品总督<BR>(刚入二品,小心做人)


注册时间: 2007-05-29
帖子: 1393
来自: GTA, Canada

帖子发表于: 星期三 十月 03, 2007 8:43 pm    发表主题: To the Lighthouse 引用并回复

Disrupting Imperial Linear Time: Virginia Woolf's Temporal Perception in To the Lighthouse


(The full-text version of the essay is published in Cultural Studies Monthly, an online bi-lingual journal launched by Cultural Studies Association, Taiwan, and it can be accessed at http://www.cc.ncu.edu.tw/~csa/journal/62/journal_park468.htm The following is the introduction of the essay)

Introduction

The prevailing emphasis of early studies on Virginia Woolf focuses on her literary experiments which center on the inner workings of the mind, portraying an individual’s stream of consciousness; Woolf adopts a new aesthetic attitude towards the modern world. It was not until the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s and cultural theories in the 1980s that her corrosive power in criticizing the patriarchal ideology of the British society was gradually recognized. Yet a growing number of Woolf scholars believe that the poignant depiction of gender inequality in her works is simply one aspect of British imperialism that she undertakes to criticize. (Hung 1-2).

In her post-colonial reading of Woolf’s work, Kathy Philips argues that

"from her first book to her last, Virginia Woolf consistently satirizes social institutions. She accomplishes this by means of incongruous juxtapositions and suggestive, concrete detail, which can be interpreted as metaphor. One of her most interesting juxtapositions associates Empire Building, war making, and gender relations in a typical constellation. […] Her novels de-emphasize the failings of characters in their personal relations and instead investigate personalities as products of dangerous ideologies. "(vii xiii-xiv)

In other words, behind her literary skill, Woolf wants to open the reader’s eyes to contradictions and questions embedded in British imperialist ideology. In this short essay, I will address Woolf’s critique of imperial linear temporality in To the Lighthouse.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul


最后进行编辑的是 ericcoliu on 星期四 十月 04, 2007 5:05 pm, 总计第 1 次编辑
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非马[FFFFFF]
非马作品集

二品总督
(刚入二品,小心做人)
二品总督<BR>(刚入二品,小心做人)


注册时间: 2005-10-15
帖子: 1053

帖子发表于: 星期四 十月 04, 2007 4:27 pm    发表主题: 引用并回复

I tried several times but was unable to open the referenced website.
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ericcoliu[ericcoliu]
ericcoliu作品集

二品总督
(刚入二品,小心做人)
二品总督<BR>(刚入二品,小心做人)


注册时间: 2007-05-29
帖子: 1393
来自: GTA, Canada

帖子发表于: 星期四 十月 04, 2007 5:13 pm    发表主题: 引用并回复

Sorry about the broken web link.

I've amended and tested the web link, and now it is accessible.
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Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul
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Champagne[Champagne]
Champagne作品集

四品府丞
(封疆大吏也!)
四品府丞<BR>(封疆大吏也!)


注册时间: 2007-09-15
帖子: 394
来自: Nowhere & Everywhere

帖子发表于: 星期五 十月 05, 2007 7:53 pm    发表主题: 引用并回复

In his essay,
ericcoliu 写到:

More importantly, Woolf also finds past experiences triggered powerfully by events in the present moments, and shows that the time perceived by her characters in the present moment is complex and multi-layered. The following is a typical passage:

The gruff murmur, irregularly broken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes which had kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (as she sat in the window which opened on the terrace), that the men were happily talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, "How's that? How's that?" of the children playing cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, "I am guarding you--I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow--this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror. ("To the Lighthouse" 23-24)

This one single complex sentence consisting of 260 words brilliantly captures the complexity of one moment through a skillfully layered structure of parenthetical phrases and clauses, modifying phrases, and a rich array of various subordinate clauses. As Ian Johnston states,

The structure of this sentence itself presents the central issue of Mrs. Ramsay's character, that she is constantly dependent upon the existence of family rituals all around her, that, although she may not participate directly in them or even be fully aware of what is going on, she relies upon such a background sense of ongoing domestic order to sustain her tranquil mood.


I’m overwhelmed by the complexity and multilayeredness of the sentence structure: the main clause begins with an indication of the subject, the gruff murmur, and it is held up by a range of associations and modifying phrases describing that murmur. When we get to the main verb, had ceased, we have gone through the ebb and flow of a range of emotions connected to the initial subject. Thus, before the sentence closes, we can see one thought amid a welter of other thoughts crowding Mrs. Ramsay's mind for attention. And in an instant, the peaceful scene has been transformed into one characterized by the last word: terror.

The structure of this sentence forces its readers to acknowledge that as the major fact of life: one can go from security to dread in an instant for reasons one cannot fully comprehend.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.
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