Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Readers’ responses to experimental techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway

Woolf’s work has been the object of several studies concerned with her experimental use of techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation. These investigated the way in which different perspectives coexist and alternate in her writing, suggesting that the use of such techniques often results in ambiguous perspective shifts. However, there is hardly any empirical evidence as to whether readers experience difficulty while reading her narratives as a result of these narrative techniques. This article examines empirically readers’ responses to extracts from Woolf’s two major novels – To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway – to provide evidence to whether Woolf’s techniques for the presentation of characters’ voices, thoughts and perspectives represent a challenge for readers. To achieve this, a mixed-methods approach that combines a stylistic analysis with a detailed questionnaire has been employed. Selected extracts that were hypothesised to be complex due to the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue were modified by substituting these with less ambiguous modes of consciousness presentation, such as direct speech or direct thought. Readers’ responses to the modified and unmodified versions of the same extracts were compared: results show that the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue increases the number of perspectives identified by readers, suggesting that this technique increases the texts’ difficulty, laying a more solid ground for future investigations

Linguistics and Literary History In honour of Sylvia Adamson

Intro -- Linguistics and Literary History -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Introduction -- References -- Enregistering the North: The dialect of Mendicus in William Bullein's Dialogue Against the Fever Pestilence -- 1. Introduction: Literary dialect and enregisterment -- 2. William Bullein and the dialogue -- 3. Sixteenth-century views of the north and northern English -- 4. Bullein's representation of Northumberland and Northumbrian dialect -- 4.1 Textual references -- 4.2 Dialect and lexis -- 4.3 Dialect and phonology -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Appendix 1: Transcription of extract from Bullein's Dialogue -- The origin and development of the iffy-an(d) conjunction -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The iffy-an(d) conjunction in the history of the English language -- 3. The variation between conditional if and and in selected Middle English texts -- 4. The occurrence of conditional and in other languages -- 5. The rise and fall of the iffy-an(d) - conclusions -- References -- From ornament to armament: The epistolary rhetoric of Lady Elizabeth Tudor -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Style and rhetoric -- 3. Elizabeth's autograph letters: 1544-1556 -- 4. Letter One: 31 December 1544, to Queen Katherine Parr -- 5. Letter Two: 17 March 1554 to Queen Mary I -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Appendix -- Letter One -- Letter Two -- Borrowing and copy: A philological approach to Early Modern English lexicology -- 1. Lexical expansion and the development of the literary language in Early Modern English lexicology -- 2. The tools available for tracing the lexical history of Early Modern English -- 3. A test case: The semantic field "sweet" -- 4. A detailed investigation of douce and dulce -- 5. Conclusions -- References -- Dictionaries, reference works, and text collectionsDecoding the parentheses in Shakespeare's Coriolanus: A functionalist approach -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Previous studies of parentheses -- 3. Parentheses: A functionalist approach -- 4. Parentheses in Coriolanus -- 4.1 Parentheses as extra information -- 4.2 Parentheses as interpersonal mediation -- 4.3 Parentheses as metalinguistic markers -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- The first person in fiction of the 1790s -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The form of first-person narrative -- 3. Memoirs of Emma Courtney: Character and necessity -- 4. Desmond: Sympathetic awareness -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- "Worth a moment's notice": Jane Austen and conversational parentheticals -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Methodology -- 3. Kinesic parentheticals: An analysis -- 3.1 General linguistic analysis -- 3.2 Character analysis -- 3.3 Summary of findings -- 4. Round brackets and kinesic parentheticals: A discussion -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Jane Austen and the prescriptivists -- 1. Jane Austen in an age of linguistic flux -- 2. Austen and grammatical rules -- 3. Austen and metalanguage -- 4. Austen and dialect -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Dismantling narrative modes: Authorial revisions in the opening of Mrs Dalloway -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The composition of Mrs Dalloway -- 3. Authorial re-vision of the text -- 3.1 The dismantling of narrative modes in the presentation of individual consciousness -- 3.2 The dismantling of narrative modes in the presentation of dialogic consciousness -- 4. The stylistic presentation of consciousness and the writer's aesthetic -- 5. Implications for narrative theory -- References -- Stylistics and "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by W.B. Yeats -- 1. Introduction -- 2. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven -- 2.1 Context -- 2.2 Overall linguistic, narratological and text-worlds interpretative structure2.3 Lines 1-5, the addresser's wish/want world and the hypothetical pledge, predicated on the existence of that wish/want world -- 2.4 Lines 6-7, the basic text-world and what the I 'actually does' -- 2.5 The request -- 2.6 Concluding remarks about the poem -- 3. Allusion/intertextuality and interpretations/readings (including anachronistic readings) -- 4. Stylistics and matters cognitive -- References -- IndexDescription based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries