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The Concept of Time in Virginia Woolf´S Novels (Orlando, the Waves)

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The Concept of Time in Virginia Woolf´S Novels (Orlando, the Waves) Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích Pedagogická fakulta Katedra anglistiky Diplomová práce The Concept of Time in Virginia Woolf´s Novels (Orlando, The Waves) Koncepce času v románech Virginie Woolfové (Orlando, Vlny) Vypracoval: Bc. Lucie Kramelová Vedoucí práce: PhDr. Alice Sukdolová, PhD. České Budějovice 2015 Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že svoji diplomovou práci jsem vypracoval/a samostatně pouze s použitím pramenů a literatury uvedených v seznamu citované literatury. Prohlašuji, že v souladu s § 47b zákona č. 111/1998 Sb. v platném znění souhlasím se zveřejněním své diplomové práce, a to v nezkrácené podobě elektronickou cestou ve veřejně přístupné části databáze STAG provozované Jihočeskou univerzitou v Českých Budějovicích na jejích internetových stránkách, a to se zachováním mého autorského práva k odevzdanému textu této kvalifikační práce. Souhlasím dále s tím, aby toutéž elektronickou cestou byly v souladu s uvedeným ustanovením zákona č. 111/1998 Sb. zveřejněny posudky školitele a oponentů práce i záznam o průběhu a výsledku obhajoby kvalifikační práce. Rovněž souhlasím s porovnáním textu mé kvalifikační práce s databází kvalifikačních prací Theses.cz provozovanou Národním registrem vysokoškolských kvalifikačních prací a systémem na odhalování plagiátů. 25. 4. 2015 České Budějovice Poděkování Chtěla bych poděkovat PhDr. Alici Sukdolové, PhD. za vedení mé práce a cenné připomínky a Joyce Barth za jazykovou korekturu. Abstract The focus of this Diploma Thesis is the work of Virginia Woolf as a representative of the literary modernism in England between the two World Wars. The Thesis also deals with the diaries of the famous writer, and it defines the basic philosophical concepts in the modernist experiment (concept of time, stream of consciousness technique) on the basis of the reading and analysis of her late novels. Key words: Virginia Woolf, The Waves, Orlando, Modernism, Time, Stream of consciousness Anotace Předmětem zkoumání diplomové práce je románová tvorba Virginie Woolfové jako představitelky literárního modernismu v Anglii v meziválečném období. Práce se dále bude zabývat deníky známé autorky a na základě četby a rozboru pozdních románů V. Woolfové práce následně definuje základní filozofické koncepce v modernistickém experimentu (pojetí času a metoda proudu vědomí). Klíčová slova: Virginia Woolfová, Vlny, Orlando, modernismus, čas, proud vědomí Obsah 1. Introduction...............................................................................................................1 2. Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)....................................................................................4 2.1. Virginia Woolf....................................................................................................4 2.2 Woolf´s Parents...................................................................................................4 2.3 Woolf´s Childhood..............................................................................................5 2.4 After Leslie Stephen´s Death..............................................................................7 2.5 Thoby´s Death.....................................................................................................8 2.6 Vanessa´s Marriage and Virginia´s Considering Marriage.................................9 2.7 Reunion with Leonard Woolf............................................................................10 2.8 Married Life......................................................................................................11 2.9 Becoming a Writer and World War I.................................................................12 2.10 Moving to London..........................................................................................13 2.11 Woolf´s Work and Upcoming War..................................................................13 2.12 World War II and Virginia´s Death.................................................................14 2.13 Virginia as a Writer.........................................................................................15 2.14 Virginia Woolf´s Perception of Time..............................................................16 3. The Bloomsbury Group..........................................................................................18 4. Modernism in Literature.........................................................................................21 5. Orlando...................................................................................................................30 5.1. Woolf´s Diary Entries......................................................................................30 5.2 The Plot.............................................................................................................33 5.3 Time in Orlando...............................................................................................42 5.4. The Stream of Consciousness in Orlando.......................................................48 6. The Waves...............................................................................................................52 6.1 Woolf´s Diary Entries.......................................................................................52 6.2 Structure............................................................................................................56 6.3 Time in The Waves............................................................................................62 6.4 The stream of consciousness in The Waves......................................................70 7. Conclusion..............................................................................................................73 8. Resumé...................................................................................................................78 9. Literature.................................................................................................................80 1. Introduction I encountered the name of the writer Virginia Woolf for the first time due to the novel by Michael Cunningham, The Hours, when I was at the secondary school. I was interested in the book and I was fascinated by the fact that the author used a real writer in his work. I also wondered if Michael Cunningham somehow adjusted Woolf´s life and her character for the purpose of his novel, or whether her life was really as he described it and as so serious and depressive all the time. Since then, I have wanted to know more about Virginia Woolf, and I have read some of her fiction. Later, I discovered her life story was very interesting and not as entirely described in The Hours, since the writer was focusing mainly on the topic of suicide in his fiction novel. Obviously, I had to encounter Woolf´s name again when I was studying British literature, and when I was considering the topic of my Master´s Thesis, I wanted to write about this strong and fascinating woman and her experimental fiction. The topic of this Master´s Thesis is the concept of time in the two novels of Virginia Woolf – The Waves and Orlando. A Biography. I try to put both novels into the context of the era when they were written and also into the context of Virginia Woolf´s life. For this section, the biggest help was the book A Writer´s Diary - a compilation of her own diaries selected by Virginia´s husband Leonard Woolf after her death. When this book was published for the first time, many people mentioned in Woolf´s diaries were still alive and it could not be published, so Leonard chose mainly the parts of her diaries which depicted Virginia as a writer. I used this book to put the novels and also her life into more complex framework. First part of my paper is dedicated to Virginia Woolf herself. We cannot explore her work without knowing at least some basic facts about her life which was very complicated and interesting. It was very inspiring and helpful to read Woolf´s biography by Hermione Lee, not only because this book is very thorough but also it is very entertaining and well-written. Another useful biography was a book by Virginia´s nephew Quentin Bell. The next part focuses on one very important part of her life which is the 1 Bloomsbury group. A group of friends and intellectuals met in Bloomsbury, a part of London, and discussed politics, philosophy, and other quite controversial topics. Among the members of this interesting and often extravagant group were many famous people, mainly Thoby, Virginia´s brother, friends from Cambridge and friends of their friends. At their time they were not considered as proper society, their lives were scandalous and they wanted to break many taboos. The aim of the fourth chapter is to summarize the modernist movement. I will concentrate on modernism as a cultural movement in literature and its features such as modernist experiments or the stream of consciousness. However, it is quite difficult to describe entire Modernism because it was very heterogeneous movement and their main common feature was that they wanted to do things and consider everything differently. They defined themselves mainly in opposition to the realism of the Victorian period. The following chapter concerns a mock biography of Orlando (1928). It contains four sections. It begins with the diary entries about the novel, Orlando. The next part explains the plot as it is necessary to know the story of the novel when we want to analyse it. The third part is dedicated to the concept of time. It shows the devices used for expressing time and
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