LanguageTerm (authority = ISO 639-3:2007); (type = text)
English
Genre (authority = marcgt)
theses
Subject
Name (authority = LC-NAF)
NamePart (type = personal)
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941--Criticism and interpretation
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Literatures in English
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Music in literature
Abstract (type = abstract)
While the visual arts have long been a focus of inquiry in Woolf criticism, attention has only recently been drawn to the potential influence of music--a fact which is all the more surprising since in her letters Woolf claimed "I think of all my books as music before I write them" (L6 426) and discussed her desire "to investigate the influence of music on literature" (L6 450). Woolf's acknowledged interest in interdisciplinary approaches to literature, her love of music, and her assumed position as a "common listener" rather than an expert, make her the ideal subject for a study of literary writing about music. This study has two overlapping focuses: Woolf's thoughts about the relationship between music and literature, and the variety of ways in which she represents the activities of making and listening to music in her writings, both fiction and non-fiction. My dissertation argues that Woolf's changing thinking about music affects both the form and content of her entire oeuvre.
Chapter One looks at Woolf's early essays on musical topics, arguing that her investigations into the nature and status of music as an art form played an important part in the formation of her own literary project. Chapter Two focuses on her representations of women musicians and scenes of musical performance in her early fiction. Woolf's depictions of music as a medium which appeals simultaneously to interiority and exteriority indicate its direct influence on her development of stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques. Chapter Three shows that the preponderance of criticism which dubs Woolf's novels "musical" in form actually ignores the vexed questions of voice and form implicit in Woolf's own novelistic representations of song: the lyric interruptions caused by such musical scenes serve not to symbolize, but rather to disturb, the idea of formal unity. Chapter Four looks at the increasingly complex figurations of music in Woolf's late work alongside the rhetoric of the English Folk Revival: Woolf both responds to new sound technologies and interrogates the vexed concepts of English history and national identity.
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
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Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
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PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
NjNbRU
Genre (authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Manhire
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Vanessa
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2010-01-06 15:08:38
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Vanessa Manhire
Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.