Rhythm In Silence

As an outstanding British modernist writer in the first half of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf devotes herself to exploring and developing"stream of consciousness"novels, which oppose traditional writing patterns to reflect the reality, especially"interior reality". Accompanied by James Joyce and William Faulkner, Woolf sets pursuit of interior reality as perpetual goal and shifts from depicting of characters and plots to the consciousness of people in her novels. Her original aesthetic and exquisite techniques make great contribution to modernism literature. The literary creation of The Waves, a masterpiece of her stream of consciousness novels, practices Woolf's ability to controlling the thoughts and writing techniques to its full play.The Waves is a novel of six different but synchronized lives form childhood, youth, middle age and old age through their individual monologues corresponding to changes and movements of natural landscapes. Modern men's fears of solitude, perplexity of life, inquiry into the meaning between growth and decay, birth and decay have been voiced out. Based on the theories of modern narratology, this thesis makes a deep research on how Woolf uses this techniques and how the techniques function to achieve artistic effects. It aims at proving that Woolf is not only an acknowledged modernism novelist but also a great modern narratologist.The thesis consists of six chapters added with introduction and conclusion. Introduction generalizes Woolf's aesthetic theories on interiority and their applications to The Waves. Then, some detailed techniques in this novel will be analyzed by comparing with traditional narrative techniques. Chapter one focuses on its narrative focalization. The alternation and juxtapositions of external focalization in the interludes and internal focalization in six characters'monologues provide the reader with the most authentic characters and Woolf's inner world. Chapter two expounds Woolf's theory on narrative time from exploring numerous and intense"moment of being"as well as Woolf's destruction of psychological time and physical time in The Waves. Chapter three deals with its poetic language effect interms of characteristics of distinctive narrative speech-dramatic soliloquy. In the last chapter, this thesis probes into its external structure and internal structure. Despite being fragmented and vogue, The Waves narrates with the background of the symbol of symphony and waves -- these two symmetrical structures added with condensing images such as Percival to achieve Woolf's theme of harmony and unity between human and nature. It is not only very beneficial for readers to understand this obscure novel from the narrative perspective but also conducive for modern narratologist to draw from Woolf's ingenious narratology theory.