Degree Year
2010
Document Type
Thesis - Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English
Advisor(s)
David Walker
Committee Member(s)
Jennifer Bryan
Sandra Zagarell
Keywords
Virginia Woolf, Woolf, The Years, The Waves, Language, Narrative, Sound, Music
Abstract
Can words ever express a truth beyond language? Virginia Woolf explores this persistent question most directly in two of her late novels, The Waves and The Years. The two appear to sit at opposite ends of the spectrum of her writing, The Waves embodying interiority and vision and The Years embodying exteriority and fact. The apparent realism of The Years, following on the heels of the impressionism of The Waves, has caused many critics to dismiss it as an aberration. But in fact the later novel is far from a regression to traditional realism: it takes up where its predecessor leaves off, attempting to find a transcendence through language while looking honestly at the conditions and limits of that transcendence. Examining them as a pair illuminates both novels, showing The Years to offer a surprisingly strange and even mystical model of language and the world.
Repository Citation
Luban, Rachel, "The Luminous Halo: The Place of Language in The Waves and The Years" (2010). Honors Papers. 385.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors/385
