A Study Of The Influence Of Roger Frye’s Aestheties On The Novel Theory Of Woolf

The first half of the20th century has witnessed the great revolution of the British novels in creativity and modernity. Henry James, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and other notable modernist novelists emerged in that time. As one of the leading stream of consciousness novelists, Woolf has taken over the task of restructuring English novels. She resolutely carried out her innovation in novel-writing and literary theory, bringing historic change to the form of English novels.Woolf has a particular aesthetic taste in both literary practice and theory which owes to not only her own exploration but also the external influence from the core member of the Bloomsbury Group, Roger Fry.Roger Fry was a British art critic, aesthetician and painter. He has introduced post-impressionism into Britain. Roughly, Fry’s aesthetic theory includes "the significant form","the double life" and "the array comments on form". His interest in the form of literature has inspired Woolf’s innovation in composing.Woolf’s diary, letters, essays and novels and her Roger Fry:a biography provide much evidence of her compliment to Fry and her acceptance of his formalist aesthetic. Besides, Fry has also affected Woolf’s composing, especially her early works, such as Blue and Green, A Haunted House in which Woolf tried to put the post-impressionism of painting into novel-writing. In The Mark on the Wall and To the Light House, her viewpoint of inner reality is similar to Fry’s "the double life". It is reflected in The Waves and To the Lighthouse, the influence of Fry’s "the array comments on form" on Woolf’s design of novel construction. We can say that Fry’s aesthetic theory has actually guided Woolf in her shift from tradition into modernity and has helped her greatly in building up her modernist novels in the literary history.