| Abstract [eng] |
This MA thesis explores the discursive formation of the self in Virginia Woolf‘s novel "The Waves". Resistant of genre classifications, the work reforms such aspects of the novel as narrator, character and plot into a hybrid, multivoiced discourse of experience. Its experimental form and metatextual commentary on narrative configuration problematize the representation of the subject in a modernist work. Paul Ricoeur‘s hermeneutic conception of discourse with its emphasis on predication is used for its reference to the intentional speaking subject. The semantic analysis is complemented by Ricoeur‘s narrative theory and hermeneutics of the self which intersect through the notion of narrative identity, while his rule of metaphor helps to explicate the work‘s poetic dimension. Ricoeur‘s hermeneutics is put in dialogue with Woolf‘s work to reveal their shared preoccupation with the relationship between narrative and identity as it takes shape in the modernist novel. His proposed dialectics of self and identity helps to explicate the radical experiments with the self in the chosen work, while Woolf‘s novel in turn expands the notion of narrative identity with problematics of language mediation. The novel‘s form, framing the main text with interludes of natural imagery, reveals a phenomenological view by highlighting humans position inbetween universal phenomena of the world. The analysis shows how the multilayered discourse of "The Waves" abstracts the characters‘ actions and inner reflection into a connecting flow of experiences and presents the self as a meaningful configuration of the subject‘s relationship with the world. Functions of narrator and character are joined into voices who become identifiable by ascribing to themselves things and experiences of the world and self-designate themselves as speaking subjects. References to direct speech emphasize the mediation of experience through language and shows the multilayered discourse of the work. By juxtaposing the discursive and bodily mediation of experience, the novel highlights the performative element of discourse which thematizes self-designation as a form of self-making. The distinction between the time of narration and the time of experience illuminates the temporal aspect of the self and the function of narrative in mediating its experience of time. Finally, the multivoiced discourse reflects the intersubjective conception of the self and its dialogic formation in relation to another. The thesis contributes to both Woolf‘s studies and the phenomenological studies of literature by showing the interpretive potential of their combination. "The Waves" offers an example and a metatextual comment on literature‘s ability to overcome the limits of subjective experience through discourse, while the hermeneutic approach enables a close analysis of the discursive form of an experimental work and its formation of the self. |
