英美文学象征意义

1、英美文学象征意义THEAN INTERTEXTUAL STUDY OFHOURS AND MRS .DALLOWAY姓名：齐晓辉学号：3112011198专业：商务英语课程：英美文学选读2013年12月28日AN INTERTEXTUAL STUDY OF THE HOURS AND MRS .DALLOWAYAbstract: Michael Cunningham sThe Hours has been treated as the contemporary review and revision of VirginiaWoolf' sMrs. Dalloway .Despite i

2、ts inter-texts with other anterior works such as the diaries and letters of Virginia Woolf,Doris Lessing ' The Golden Notebook and to Room Nineteen,Mrs .Dalloway remains the central source for his fiction.By entitling his novel“ The Honis6”te titlesWoolf considered for her novel in its early sta

3、ges,Cunningham manipulates Mrs. Dalloway in his “ Mrs.Woolf ” , “ Mrs.Brown ” and “ Mrs.Dallow y” ,eitheias the three narrative strands or as three major characters .Besides,he expressed his viewpoint about some themes,suchas theme of death,response to life,and infused his own conception in some ima

4、ges,like parties and flowers,all of which can bet raced back to Woolf' s text .In addition,Cunningham also shows his indebtedness as a postmodernist writer to his modernist canon by employing similar techniques such as the technique of stream of consciousness .By adopting and adapting the anteri

5、or text in a variety of ways,Cunningham weaves the intertextual elements in his own writing and creates an innovative text .Adopting the theory of intertextuality this thesisis intended to explore the intertextual connection between the two texts and investigate how Cunningham manipulates and transf

6、orms the anterior texts and,accordingly,establishes a two-way relationship between himself and Woolf.KeyWords: intertextuality,Kristeva,Mrs Dalloway,Virgi nia Woolf,The Hours,MichaelCunninghamIntroduction: Intertextuality is the shaping of a text meaning by another text. Intertextual figures include

7、: allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation,pastiche and parod y. An example of intertextuality is an author ' borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader ' s referencing of one text in reading another.The term a intertextuality ” has, itself, been borrowed and tra

8、nsformed many times since it was coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966. As philosopher William Irwin wrote, the term “ has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristeva original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion

9、 and influence. "Similarity in Plot and Characters. According toKristeva,one feature of intertextuality is the similarity in plot and characters of the two texts .The Hours and Mrs. Dallowaybeardistinctive resemblance to each other,for they share surprisingly great similarity in the arrangement

10、 of plot and characters .In a sense,Mrs.Dalloway is a novel without a plot .I nstead of creating major situations between characters to push the story forward,or,highs and lows that foreshadow the climax of the story,Woolf directs her narration by following the passing hours of a day.The story is co

11、mposed of movements from one character to another,or of movements from the internal thoughts of one character to the internal thoughts of another.The characters are connected as they walk and coincide in space .On the other hand,as an enthusiastic reader of Virginia Woolf,Cunningham acknowledgesthat

12、 his works are greatly influenced by her conceptand novels .He opensThe Hours with a chilling description of Virginia Woolf ' s suicide in 1941 .It is then followed by three distinct narrative strands that overlap one another,say,“ Mrs.Dalloway ”,“ Mrs.Brown ” and“ Mrs. Woolf” ,developed into se

13、ven episodes while each part is a story about a female striving for a life that she cannot definably identify .Clarissa Vaughan is a contemporary woman who lives in the New York City of the United States and works as an editor,Laura Brown is a housewife in Los Angel's in 佃49,while Virginia Woolf

14、,the famous writer,is now in 1923,a period after the First World War,staying in the suburbs of London with her husband Leonard .This novel,telling the stories of three different women in different periods of time and locations,repeatedlyechoeswith Woolf' s Mrs.Dalloway,either in plot or characte

15、rs,just like a riff on the latter.I.Symmetry in PlotThe new millennium,theSecond WorldWar and the First World War are the respective invitation and dine out without their company;and finally they hear the news of somebody' s death .Under the same title of Mrs. Dalloway,all of these similarities

16、contribute to the intertextuality between the two texts.Vaughan and Dalloway share great similarities indeed,however,they still display some divergence .The two Clarissa live in different backgrounds,one in modern New York and the other in London 1923.Clarissa Dalloway struggles between the titlesMr

17、s.Dalloway” and“ Clarissa” .She feels attached to her husband and invisible as an independent woma n. Cunningham alludes to the basic plot of Woolf' s work,and then develops into a story of his own. Vaughan Clarissa always confirms her independent identity,and even wants to get rid of the title

18、given by Richard: “Is n' t it time,she thinks,to dispense with the old nickname?” (Cunningham 55)The name to her is only a poetic conceit and Richard' s idea of her.She manages to assure her own identity in the end:“ And here she is,herself,Clarissa,not Mrs. Dalloway anymore;there is no one

19、now to call her thatHere she is with another hour before her.”(P226)Clarissa in Cunningham' s text,progressesinto a revolutionary figure that is positive towards life in the future instead of endlessly reminiscing of the past .On the contrary,Woolf" s Clarissa looks for the meaning of life

20、primarily in the gone days,and her life is dominated by male,first by her husband,and then by Peter,whose words concludethe whole novel as well as confirm Clarissa existence and significance: “it is Clarissa,he said .For there she was ” (Mrs.Dalloway P141).The double Clarissa,Clarissa Dalloway and C

21、larissa Vaughan,are interplayed within the context,and they are just the other self in the mirror.Mrs .Dalloway plays as a linkage interweaving psychological process and realistic description between these two characters .The part “Mrs.Brown ” of The Hours starts with the words “ Mrs.Dalloway said s

22、he would buy the flowers herself ,the first line exactly extracted from Woolf' s Mrs.Dalloway which is the bookMrs.Brown is now reading .She is endeavoring to enter Mrs.Dalloway' s world,Woolf s world,so as to escape from her present dilemmatic life .Bearing her second child,Laura is struggl

23、ing between her instinctive yearning for freedom and the request to become a good wife and mother. “She does not dislike her child,does not dislike her husband .She will rise and be cheerful”（P41）,is what she tries to convince herself of,while on the other to Europe,and currently he is teaching dram

24、a in San Francisco,in love with his students .While Peter has a peculiar habit of playing with his pocket knife now and then,Louis is used to counting steps while he s walking .Mo reover,both of them are the type of people who greatly cherish youth .Walter Hardy in The Hours also echoes with Hugh Wh

25、itbread in Mrs. Dalloway .Both of them have their spouse in sicknessand meetClarissa in the street;both of them are participants in the luncheon which Clarissa is not invited to;furthermore they are not as adorable as other characters according to writer' s description.The two novels share great

26、 similarity not only in plots but also in the arrangement of characters. The characters in the two texts are interwoven with each other, or to be more exact, it is Cunningham that borrows most of his characters from Mrs. Dalloway, thus creating an intertextual bond between his story and Woolf' s

27、 work. His The Hours is centered on three female characters, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Woolf, who are not only closelyinterrelated with each other, but also intertextual with the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf .In The Hours the author divides the story into three segments, almost equ

28、ally allocated to three women in one single day of their life: Clarissa in contemporary New York City, Mrs. Brown in Los Angles in 1949 and Mrs. Woolf in Richmond, the outskirts of London, 1923. Dubbed as Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughan is an editor living in Greenwich Village, New York. One day in

29、June she plans to give a party for Richard, her best friend, to celebrate his receipt of a literary award for his poems. And on another day in June half a century ago, Laura wakes up in hope of making a cake for her husband' s birthday together with her three-year-old son, Richie .In her spare t

30、ime Laura is indulged in the novel Mrs. Dalloway written by Virginia Woolf, which in turn leads to the third part of the story, a story about Woolf, who is in process of composing the novel on one June day in 1923.In Mrs. Dalloway, the 52-year-old Clarissa Dalloway rushes out to buy flowers for the

31、party, entering a park on a fresh June morning, where she meets the 55-year-old Hugh Whitbread. She has a loyal and decent husband Richard and a lovely daughter Elizabeth. With Septimus as her pale and dying shadow, Clarissa is after all the novel' s center. Her death has been transferred to Sep

32、timus, who is sacrificed for female's development. These two characters are inevitably interwoven and mutually dependent upon each other. Clarissa is outraged that the Brad shaws should bring the news of death to her party while escaping for a moment to reflect “ it was herdisaster herdisgrace.

33、It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced tostand here in her evening dress” (Mrs. Dalloway 134). On the other hand, Septimus knows nothing about Clarissa or her party, for it is truly what Clarissa feels and experiences that

34、 ultimately matters.“ She feltsomehow verylike him the youngman who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living” (Mrs. Dalloway 135). She must assemble herself, her thoughts, her remaining guests of her party, and also the rest of her life. Like mo

35、st people in her time, Clarissa gives parties to cover the dead silence and conceal the traumatic truth that “ life is made intolerable (P134).Undoubtedly, the part of “ Mrs. Dalloway ” in The Hours is directly originated from Woolf ' s novel. Cunningham' s story takes place at the end of th

36、e 20th century. Thesetting is Manhattan, and the contemporary social ill is AIDS. The characters, rather than bourgeois, are members of America' s artistic and academic elite. They may be rich by the world' s standards, but hardly “ New York rich ” . The two protagonists share the same title

37、 Mrs. Dalloway and both stories take place within one day in June. They have a party to give; they have flowers to purchase; they stop outside the florist' s and cast a glance at some celebrity Cunningham' s Clarissa meets a movie star and Woolf' s encountersa mysterious important figure

38、, who turns out be Prince of Wales eventually; they encounter afriend on the roadand receive anotherontheway backhome; theirspousegetanexclusive14invitation and dine out withouttheir company; and finally they hear the news of somebody s death. Under the same title of Mrs. Dalloway, all of these simi

39、larities contribute to the intertextuality between the two texts.Vaughan and Dalloway share great similarities indeed, however, they still display some divergence. The two Clarissa live in different backgrounds, one in modern New York and the other in London 1923. Clarissa Dalloway struggles between

40、 the titles “ Mrs. Dalloway” and “ Clarissa”t is apparent that Cunningham puts much emphasis on the selection of names of his characters. The name Clarissa Vaughan is associatedwith Woolf not only in resemblance with the name of the female character in her book, but also in that its surname derives

41、from Woolf ' s first crush on a woman MadgeVaugha n. Therefore the name creates another layer of allusions to the Woolf novel. Clariss's daughter Julia, a queer girl, has the same name as Virginia ' s mother. The same is with other characters. Richard, an AIDS patient in The Hours, is Mr

42、s. Dalloway' s husband in Woolf s novel. Sally, the lesbian partner of Clarissa Vaughan in The Hours, is also the woman who arousesClarissa Dalloway' s first affection for female. By borrowing and mixing the names of the characters, Cunningham transforms Woolf s novel and enriches his own st

43、ory .In this way, he establishes an intertextual bond with Wools Mrs. Dallowa y.ConclusionAccording to Intertextuality:Theories and Practices,the theory of intertextuality insists that a text cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficientwhole,and thus does not functionas a closed system .There are t

44、wo reasons which are sufficiently convincingFirstly,before the writer becomesa creator of texts,he must have read a pile of texts which will unavoidably affect his own writing .Repetition of some phrases or even passages,reference to some signifying images,deliberate adoption of quotation or parody

45、all contribute to the inevitable involvement of the text with previous ones .Cunningham 's work,for instance,ismarked by his desire to produce a text in multiple purposes,either in memory of Mrs.Dalloway or paying homage to this great masterpiece,andto reproduce a text combining element of Woolf

46、 together with his conception and creatio n.ln fact,The Hours is an attempt at osmosis with the spirit of Virginia Woolf .In his novel,Cunningham draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inh

47、eritance,life and death,creation and destructio n. The novel moves along with three separate but parallel stories,each focusing on the experiences of a particular woman during the course of one apparently unremarkable but in fact pivotal day.The prominent French structuralist critic Kristeva depersonalized a literary product by conceiving it to be an impersonal text instead of a simple work,and here The Hours is one typical example .This paper intends to give readers a number of interesting an