Moments Seized or Ceased : An Analysis of Two Novels by Virginia Woolf

Abstract

Moments Seized or Ceased is a thesis presented to the Department of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo Spring term 2002. It is an analysis of two novels by Virginia Woolf, both published in the 1920s, Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The thesis discusses the rendering of perceptual processes, or interpretation of individual impressions, in the novels. One of its main critical aims is to consider how these processes can be said to represent a more specific world-view in Virginia Woolf s fiction, on the basis of the texts selected. It also considers narrative techniques that can be said to enhance the main thematic concerns in the novels (for example, the subjective experience of time and space ), and argues that narrative concerns play an important part in Woolf s complex novels. The main critics referred to in the thesis are Charles Baudelaire and Mieke Bal, who, from their respective positions within European Modernism and Narratology, together with Dominick LaCapra bring to the thesis perspectives from a variety of fields within literary criticism.