“We Are the Words”: Reconceiving Reality in the Works of Virginia Woolf

• Název práce v češtině: "Jsme slovy": nové nahlížení reality v dílech Virginie Woolfové.
• Název v anglickém jazyce: “We Are the Words”: Reconceiving Reality in the Works of Virginia Woolf
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2021/2022
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: Mgr. David Vichnar, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 02.05.2022
• Datum zadání: 02.05.2022
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: ne

Zásady pro vypracování

The proposed thesis will focus on the representation of reality in selected works of Virginia Woolf, arguing detailing that how her modernist approach to depicting the world is more accurate, or, in a way, ‘realistic’ than that ofdiffered fromthe preceding rRealist period. Virginia Woolf famously reinvented the way characters in fiction were formed and reality describednarratives shaped, as she looked for ways to use language in a better way that wouldmore suited toconveyingauthentically the human experience of realitymore authentically. Modernism is a movement where representation becomes problematised. However, that is because the Modernists, including Woolf, realized that representation is not straightforward and must be treated as such, and so they startedthroughtheouse of new mimetic and narrative strategies such as the stream of consciousness, fragmentation, subjectivity, etc. The proposed thesis would argue that these strategies are in fact more efficient in terms of achieving realisticapproximating the psychological reality of experiencemimesis, as they are based on the realization that reality is experienced differently by every single sentient being, which makes any kind of coherent, objective representation of it impossible. Another important realization is thatlinksthe problems and limitations ofperceiving reality to the use oflanguage itself as a mimetic tool and means of communicationis not perfect, as itis, too, is experienced, understood and, most importantly, interpreted differently by every person. The thesis will look at the ways Woolf deals with the impossibility of representing reality objectively and completely in four of her major novels: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves. It will also explore the limits of representation in her work – what cannot be represented even in Woolf’s terms: what stands outside of representation, outside of language, outside of existence. Attentionmustwillbe paid not only to the form of representation itself but also to what is being represented and why. In her novels as well as the short stories, Woolf focuses on the ordinary, as the perception of one’s surroundings and the thoughts they provoke, and the ways people engage with reality by interacting with objects and other people were more important to her than the plot itself.WhenTellinga story is told from multiple points of view, itdemonstrates how the experience and understanding of realityisdiffersentforom every person to person.When it is toldTelling it from a single point of view, itdemonstrates the limitations of perception. Woolf’s understanding of the inaccessibility of an objective reality not only changes the way representationused to beis understood inrealismliterature, but it also anticipates the postmodern problematisations of reality and truth themselves. The narrators’ perceptions of reality cannot be reliable, and neither can the reader believe everything the narrator tells them.Also addressed will be tThe paradox that Woolf addresses the subjectivity and singularity of perception but is an author who writes from the perspectives of other characters should not be omitted. Woolf’s work often highlights not only the impossibility of knowing something, but also that of communicating meaning through language truthfully. This scepticism towards the functionality of language and the representation of the world goes against thelogicideologyofrRealist fiction and poses questions about what exactly realistic mimesis is supposedtolook like and whetherit is possible to know whatreality isknowable or narratable.and to tell a complete story.
Woolf wrote about the nature of writing itself and the representational qualities of language in many of her essays which serve as a great source of information about the ideas behind her writingsand as secondary sources for this thesis. The major theoretical sources will be some of the most important names in the philosophy of reality, representation and language of the 20^th century: Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Rorty, Wittgenstein, and others. After establishing whatiswe understooand bymModernism and discussing Woolf as a theorist and philosopher, the thesis will be based onaclose reading of Woolf’s works and mapping the various techniques and elements that help her achieve a realistic representation of the unrepresentable, grounding the arguments in the theory of these philosophers.

Seznam odborné literatury

Primary Sources:
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Secondary Sources:
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard
R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977.
Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang,
1975.
Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature. Edited by Derek Attridge. New York: Routledge: 1992.
Foucault, Michel. Language, Madness and Desire: On Literature. Translated by Robert Bononno.
Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2015.
Frascina, Francis and Charles Herrison, eds. Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. New
York: Westview Press, 1987.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall, 2nd
edition. New York: Continuum, 1997.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Translated by Frederick Lawrence.
Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998.
Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Off the Beaten Track. Translated by Julian
Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Lyotard, Jean-François. “Representing the Unrepresentable: The Sublime.” Translated by Lisa
Liebmann. Artforum, 1982. Artforum Online <
https://www.artforum.com/print/198204/presenting-the-unpresentable-the-sublime-35606>
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense.” Translated by Taylor Carman. New
York: HarperPerennial, 2010.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New
York: Vintage Books, 1968.
Rorty, Richard. “Getting Rid of the Appearance-Reality Distinction.” New Literary History, vol. 47, no. 1,
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, pp. 67–81,
Accessed Jan 13.
Rorty, Richard. “Realism and Reference.” The Monist, vol. 59, no. 3, Oxford University Press, 1976,
pp. 321–40, Accessed Jan 13.
Rorty, Richard. “The Contingency of Language.” London Review of Books, Vol. 8 No. 7, 17 April
1986, < https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n07/richard-rorty/the-contingency-of-language> Accessed Jan 13.
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador, 1966.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 1977.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. Translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1969.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1986.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F.
McGuinness. New York: Routledge, 1974.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays, Volume I. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.
Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays, Volume II. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.