East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 12-2016 Virginia Woolf’s Fictional Biographies, Orlando and Flush, as Prefigures of Postmodernism Jacob C. Castle East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Castle, Jacob C., "Virginia Woolf’s Fictional Biographies, Orlando and Flush, as Prefigures of Postmodernism" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3158. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3158 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Virginia Woolf’s Fictional Biographies, Orlando and Flush, as Prefigures of Postmodernism _____________________ A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of Literature and Language East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in English _____________________ by Jacob Castle December 2016 _____________________ Dr. Daniel Westover, Chair Dr. Mark Baumgartner Dr. Katherine Weiss Keywords: Fictional Biography, Historiographic Metafiction, New Biography, Postmodernism, Virginia Woolf ABSTRACT Virginia Woolf’s Fictional Biographies, Orlando and Flush, as Prefigures of Postmodernism by Jacob Castle This thesis examines the way in which the fictional biographies of Virginia Woolf, Orlando and Flush, prefigure central tenets of postmodern fiction. To demonstrate the postmodern elements present in Orlando and Flush, this thesis focuses on how the fictional biographies exhibit three postmodern characteristics: concern for historiography, extensive use of parody, and the denaturalization of cultural assumptions.