IV. Portrait of an Actress
About the author
Woolf ----
Virginia (Stephen) Woolf, 1882 – 1941, English novelist. She was an innovative influence on the 20th-cent. novel. With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she t up the Hogarth Press in 1917. Their home was the center for the BLOOMSBURY GROUUP. In her writing she concentrated on the flow of ordinary experience through the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS technique. Her pro is poetic, symbolic, and visual. Woolf’s novels include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthou (1927), Orlando (1928), 俄罗斯文学家The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1940). Her criticism is contained in The Common Reader (1925) and volumes of essays, letters, and diaries. She also wrote two feminist tracts, A Room of One’s Own当今时代主题 (1929) and Three Guineas (1938).
奖学金个人总结Virginia Woolf revolted against what she called the ‘materialism’ of major British novelists of
the early 1900’s. By this she meant their preoccupation with outward, visible events. She felt it was more important to show the inner esnce of a character in fiction by revealing the character’s thoughts and concentrating on preci, significant details about him. She followed the path which James Joyce had opened up, and then branched off in a new direction. Virginia Woolf’s stories often reflect her concern about women. She suffered in her own experience as an eminent woman intellectual, and encountered special difficulties as a woman writer, in a time when even university libraries were sometimes clod to women. Her point of view was always progressive and open-minded, and she encouraged others to liberate their minds likewi.
In her works, Virginia Woolf wanted to emphasize the continuous flow of people’s experiences in life, and to show how external circumstances only affect a person to the degree that he notices them or takes account of them, each according to his own type of character. She wanted also to show the contradictions of time, which always exists in the prent ten, yet flows unbroken through the years and centuries. In her most popular novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthou, she showed her technical mastery as a
writer. Both books have a tightly organized form, in which the time of the action is very short, allowing space for much detail, and in which images recur like rhymes in a poem. Her u of very long ntences, difficult syntax and large vocabulary sometimes make her books hard to read.
师出无名的意思
Background notes什么时候冬至
Bloomsbury Group ---- Bloomsbury is a ction of London, near the British Muum and the universities, with veral squares and small parks surrounded by private hous. The name was given to a number of British writers, philosophers and artists who lived there and met for informal discussions at each other’s hous between 1907 and 1930. They discusd questions of art and philosophy with open minds, eking the definitions of ‘good’, ‘true’ and ‘beautiful’. They examined all ideas commonly held by the society, looking for elements of insincerity and fal logic. They did not form a single school of thought, although they shared many ideas. The group’s importance lay in the high number of brilliant, talented people who made Bloomsbury the centre of progressive new
thinking in Britain. In general, its members criticized the Victorian conrvatism of British society in matters of religion, morality and art, and they sought truth through the u of reason.
Virginia Woolf was one of the first members. Others members included Lytton STRACHEY, Leonard WOOLF, . FORSTER, V. SACKVILLE-WEST, Roger FRY, Clive Bell, and John Maynard KEYNES.
stream of consciousness ---- Literary technique for recording the thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to their logical association or narrative quence. The writer attempts to reflect all the forces affecting the psychology of a character at a single moment. Introduced by the French writer Edouard Dujardin in We’ll to the Woods No More青年的年龄范围 (1888), the technique was ud notably by James JOYCE, Virginia WOOLF and William FAULKNER.
About the text
come on ---- appear on or move to (the stage)
愉悦的欲望
When Lawrence Oliver came on for the first time, the audience applauded.
The next player came on five minutes late.
People clapped and shouted and made her come on again and again.
赞美的词语Captain Brassbound’s Conversion ---- a play written by George Bernard Shaw.
the stage collapd like a hou of cards ----This is of cour metaphorical. The ides is that when Ellen Terry appeared on the stage as Lady Cicely, it was as if the stage had suddenly cead to exist. She was the central figure, casting all the other actors into the shade.
a ripe, richly asoned “cello” ---- A ‘cello’ made of elaborately asoned wood, that is, wood made specially hard for u. Season’: -- to harden (wood) to make it ready for u by drying it gradually: The days wood is rarely asoned in the traditional way and is treated with prervative instead.
it grated, it glowed and it growled ---- Notice the repetition of the letter ‘g’ which sounds a note of passion and rage.
ttee ---- a sofa
She had forgotten her part. ---- She had forgotten her lines in the play. ( She forgot what the character should say next. )
