The Affinity between Subjectivity and Language in The Waves文献综述

 2022-08-19 09:43:25

Literature Review on The Waves

The Waves (1931) presents a seductive quality to the reader. As one of Woolfrsquo;s boldest experiments, it allures and dissolves readers in its strange mix of fluidity and fixity. Most critics have expressed their preference for this masterpiece while admitting the difficulty in critical discourse. Stuart Hampshire has once commented that “the reader of The Waves is left helpless, either overwhelmed or repelled...without the independent material on which his imagination can work. The implications are already stated, the novel criticizes itself.” The recurring manifestation and dissolution of subjectivity among the characters render The Waves a self-conscious novel and refuse to be labeled as an inferior object in the process of reading. The resistance to imprudent criticism does not suggest the work to be self-enclosed but claim for mutual openness between the interpreter and the text. For those critics who are preoccupied with the investigation of the novel, the first step, just as Eric Warner proposes, is to “draw back, gaining some distance and perspective”. Through suspending a stable and habitual stance, a more comprehensive reflection is reached and its deep homology with other domains is exposed. Various literary theories such as phenomenology, modernism, narratology, feminism have been employed to approach The Waves.

Abroad:

The great meticulousness Woolf has shown in capturing her charactersrsquo; perception of reality, which, according to Joann Circosta in “Witness to Consciousness: Virginia Woolf and Phenomenology”, has “a close affinity with Husserlrsquo;s philosophy”. Glossing this view, Rebecca Rauve-Davis asserts in her essay the feasibility and superiority of Husserlianrsquo;s phenomenology over Bertrand Russellrsquo;s atomism and Henri Bergsonrsquo;s account of pure duration in terms of providing the best philosophical lens to understand Woolfrsquo;s works.

In “A Phenomenological Study of Selfhood in Virginia Woolfrsquo;s Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves”, Saghar Najaf clarifies how Woolfrsquo;s characters perceive the world and to what extent it shapes their consciousness with the application of Husserlrsquo;s two concepts “intentionality” and “temporality”. In her analysis of Rhoda, an elusive figure in The Waves, the dissolution of subjectivity is attributed to the discrepancy of world-to-mind compatibility and the incompetency to realize the difference among subjective time.

In contrast, Małgorzata Myk questions the criterion concerning the judgment of Rhoda. In her essay “Let Rhoda Speak Again: Identity, Uncertainty, and Authority in Virginia Woolfrsquo;s The Waves”, she criticizes the western male humanismrsquo;s underlying concept of the unitary self and instead deems subjectivity as “implicated in a dynamic of intersubjective processes of becoming rather than being”. Furthermore, she identifies Rhodarsquo;s experimental and subversive discourse as a polemic with the Cartesian dualism of mind and body supported by Maurice Merleau-Pontyrsquo;s anti-dualistic notion of anonymous existence. Notably, quite a few scholars have called attention to the usefulness of Merleau-Ponty for articulating the theoretical implications of Woolfrsquo;s fictional practice.

In “Virginia Woolf and the flesh of the world”, Louise Westling manifests the similarity between Woolf and Merleau-Ponty concerning their emphasis on community and interrelationship. While illustrating Woolfrsquo;s treatment of animal, plant, and inanimate objects, he digs deep into Woolfrsquo;s conception of a mysterious matrix that gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity. Coincidently it echoes Merleau-Pontyrsquo;s notion of flesh, which presupposes the balance between the psychical and physical dimension of everythingrsquo;s coexistence in the world.

Laura Doyle offers the fullest justification for this physicality in her discussion of Woolfrsquo;s novel To the Lighthouse by appealing to Merleau-Pontyrsquo;s treatment of embodiment to show the body “not as a fixed or positivistic referent,” but rather as embedded within the flux of time-space. Besides, the intrinsic interaction between physicality and language is addressed. As Doyle presents, the body “survives with and in language and narrative, partly because languagersquo;s physicality extends the phenomenal worldrsquo;s physicality”.

The language issue has always received special concern in the literary interpretation of Woolfrsquo;s works. In “Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of The Waves”, Maureen Chun demonstrates that the characters in The Waves perceive words as sensuous, synaesthetically evocative phenomena or things rather than basic units of verbal representation. He brings forth the concept of “the secret language”, which regards words themselves as imagistic rather than linguistic, and links it with subjectivity. “The subject is composed of sensations that constitute a path to a grammar of consciousness—the grammar of a secret language—rather than a terrain of semiotic potential.” Whereas Julie Vandivere argues that the“grammatical and figural complexities” in The Waves constitute “a primary manifestation of the textrsquo;s recurrent doubts about the stability of any linguistic or ontological assertion.”

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