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1、F E . JrJ .i叼iAN INTERTEXTUALSTUDY OF THE HOURSAND MRS.DALLOWAY姓名：齊曉輝 學(xué)號(hào)：3112011198 專業(yè)：商務(wù)英語 課程：英美文學(xué)選讀指導(dǎo)老師：楊曉霖完成日期：2013年12月28日AN INTERTEXTUALSTUDY OF THE HOURS ANDMRS.DALLOWAYAbstract ：Michael Cunnin ghams The Hours has been treated as the contemporary review andrevision of Virginia Woolfs Mrs.Dallow

2、ay.Despite -itesxitnstewrith other anterior works suchs The Golden Notebook and to Roomas the diaries and letters of Virginia Woolf,Doris LessingNineteen,Mrs.Dalloway remains the central source for his fiction.By entitling his novel “The Hours ”one of the titles Woolf considered for her novel in its

3、 early stages,Cunningham manipulates Mrs.Dalloway in his “ Mrs.Woolf ”, “ Mrs.Brown ” and “ Mrs.Dallowaays th”e,eitherthree narrative strands or as three major characters.Besides,he expressed his viewpoint about somethemes,such as theme of death,response to life,and infused his own conception in som

4、e images,like parties and flowers,all of which can bet raced back to Woolf stext.Inaddition,Cunningham also shows his indebtedness as a postmodernist writer to his modernistcanon by employing similar techniques such as the technique of stream of consciousness.Byadopting and adapting the anterior tex

5、t in a variety of ways,Cunningham weaves the intertextualelements in his own writing and creates an innovative text.Adopting the theory of intertextualitythis thesis is intended to explore the intertextual connection between the two texts and investigatehow Cunningham manipulates and transforms the

6、anterior texts and,accordingly,establishes a two-way relationship between himself and Woolf.Key Words: intertextuality,Kristeva,Mrs.Dalloway,Virginia Woolf,The Hours,MichaelCunninghamIntroduction: Intertextuality is the shaping of a text meaning by another text.Intertextualfigures include: allusion,

7、 quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation,pastiche and example of intertextuality is an author bosrrowing and transformation of a prior reader resferencing of one text in reading another.The term “ intertextuality has, i”tself, beenparody. Antext or to aborrowed and transformed many times since it

8、 was coined bypoststructuralist Julia Kristeva in“has come to have almost as many meaningss original vishi onstiomtphloysueswe it as a stylishway of talking about allusion and influence . ”Similarity in Plot and Characters. According to1966. As philosopher William Irwin wrote, the termas users, from

9、 those faithful to KristevaKristeva,one feature of intertextuality is the similarity in plot and characters of the two texts.TheHours and Mrs.Dalloway bear distinctive resemblance to each other,for they share surprisinglygreat similarity in the arrangement of plot and characters.In a sense,Mrs.Dallo

10、way is a novelwithout a plot.Instead of creating major situations between characters to push the storyforward,or,highs and lows that foreshadow the climax of the story,Woolf directs her narration byfollowing the passing hours of a day.The story is composed of movements from one character toanother,o

11、r of movements from the internal thoughts of one character to the internal thoughts ofanother.The characters are connected as they walk and coincide in space.On the other hand,as anenthusiastic reader of Virginia Woolf,Cunningham acknowledges that his works are greatlyinfluenced by her concept and n

12、ovels.He opens The Hours with a chilling description of VirginiaWoolf s suicide in 1941.It is then followed by three distinct narrative strands that overlap oneanother,say, “ Mrs.Dalloway ” ,“ Mrs.Brown ” and “ Mrs.Woolf ” ,developed into sevenepisodes while each part is a story about a female striv

13、ing for a life that she cannot definablyidentify.Clarissa Vaughan is a contemporary woman who lives in the New York City of theUnited States and works as an editor,Laura Brown is a housewife in Los Angels in1949,whileVirginia Woolf,the famous writer,is now in 1923,a period after the First World War,

14、staying in thesuburbs of London with her husband Leonard.This novel,telling the stories of three differentwomen in different periods of time and locations,repeatedly echoes with Woolf sMrs.Dalloway,either in plot or characters,just like a riff on the latter.I.Symmetry in PlotThe new millennium,the S

15、econd World War and the FirstWorld War are the respectiveinvitation and dine out without their company;and finally theyhear the news of somebody sdeath.Under the same title of Mrs.Dalloway,all of thesesimilarities contribute to theintertextuality between the two texts.Vaughan and Dalloway share grea

16、t similaritiesindeed,however,they still display some divergence.The two Clarissa live in different backgrounds,one in modern New York and the other in London 1923.Clarissa Dalloway strugglesbetween the titles “ Mrs.Dalloway ” and “ Clarissa ” .She feels attached to her husband andinvisible as an ind

17、ependent woman.Cunningham alludes to the basic plot of Woolf s work,andthen develops into a story of his own.Vaughan Clarissa always confirms her independentidentity,and even wants to get rid of the title given by Richard: “ Is nt it time,she thinks,todispense with the old nickname? ” (Cunningham 55

18、)The name to her is only a poetic conceit andRichard s idea of her.She manages to assure her own identity in the end:“ And here sheis,herself,Clarissa,not Mrs.Dalloway anymore;there is no one now to call her that.Here she is withanother hour before her. ” (P226)Clarissa in Cunningham s text,progress

19、es into a revolutionaryfigure that is positive towards life in the future instead of endlessly reminiscing of the past.On the contrary,Woolf s Clarissa looks for the meaning of life primarily in the gone days,and her life is dominated by male,first by her husband,and then by Peter,whose words conclu

20、de the whole novel as well as confirm Clarissa existence and significance: “it is Clarissa,he said.For there she was” (Mrs.Dalloway P141).The double Clarissa,Clarissa Dalloway and Clarissa Vaughan,are interplayed within the context,and they are just the other self in the mirror.Mrs.Dalloway plays as

21、 a linkage interweaving psychological process and realistic description between these two characters.The part“ Mrs.Brown ” of The Hours starts with the words “ Mrs.Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself ” ,the first line exactly extracted from Woolf s Mrs.Dalloway which is the book Mrs.Brow

22、n is now reading.She is endeavoring to enter Mrs.Dalloway s world,Woolf s world,so as to escape from her present dilemmatic life.Bearing her second child,Laura is struggling between her instinctive yearning for freedom and the request to become a good wife and mother. “ She does not dislike her chil

23、d,does not dislike her husband.She will rise and be cheerful ” (P41),is what she tries to convince herself of,while on the other to Europe,and currently he is teaching drama in San Francisco,in love with his students.While Peter has a peculiar habit of playing with his pocket knife now and then,Loui

24、s is used to counting steps while he s walking.Moreover,both of them are the type of people who greatly cherish youth.WalterHardy in The Hours also echoes with Hugh Whitbread in Mrs.Dalloway.Both of them have their spouse in sickness and meet Clarissa in the street;both of them are participants in t

25、he luncheon which Clarissa is not invited to;furthermore they are not as adorable as other characters according to writer s description.The two novels share great similarity not only in plots but also in the arrangement of characters. The characters in the two texts are interwoven with each other, o

26、rs work. Histo be more exact, it is Cunningham that borrows most of his characters from Mrs.Dalloway, thus creating an intertextual bond between his story and WoolfThe Hours is centered on three female characters, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Woolf, who are not only closely interrelated with e

27、ach other, but also intertextual with the novel Mrs.Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. In The Hours the author divides the story into three segments,Clarissa inalmost equally allocated to three women in one single day of their life: contemporary New York City, Mrs. Brown in Los Angles in 1949 and Mrs. Wool

28、f inRichmond, the outskirts of London, 1923. Dubbed as Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughan is an editor living in Greenwich Village, New York. One day in June she plans to give a party forRichard, her best friend, to celebrate his receipt of a literary award for his poems. And on anotherday in June half

29、 a century ago, Laura wakes up in hope of making a cake for her husband s birthday together with her three-year-old son, Richie. In her spare time Laura is indulged in the novel Mrs. Dalloway written by Virginia Woolf, which in turn leads to the third part of the story, a story about Woolf, who is i

30、n process of composing the novel on one June day in 1923.In Mrs. Dalloway, the 52-year-old Clarissa Dalloway rushes out to buy flowers for the party, entering a park on a fresh June morning, where she meets the 55-year-old HughWhitbread. She has a loyal and decent husband Richard and a lovely daught

31、er Elizabeth. WithSeptimus as her pale and dying shadow, Clarissa is after all the novel s center. Her death has been transferred to Septimus, who is sacrificed for female s development. These two characters are inevitably interwoven and mutually dependent upon each other. Clarissa is outraged that

32、theBrad shaws should bring the news of death to her party while escaping for a moment to reflectit was her disaster her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress” (Mrs. Dalloway 13

33、4). On the other hand, Septimus knows nothing about Clarissa or her party, for it is truly what Clarissa feels and experiences that ultimately matters. “ She felt somehow very like him the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he hadmostdone it; thrown it away while they went on livin

34、g ” (Mrs. Dalloway 135). She must assemble herself, her thoughts, her remaining guests of her party, and also the rest of her life. Like people in her time, Clarissa gives parties to cover the dead silence and conceal the traumatic truth that “ life is made intolerable ” (P134).Undoubtedly, the part

35、 of “ Mrs. Dalloway ” in The Hours is directly originated from Woolf novel. Cunningham s story takes place at the end of the 20th century. The setting isManhattan, and the contemporary social ill is AIDS. The characters, rather than bourgeois, aremembers of America s artistic and academic elite. The

36、y may be rich by the worldstandards, but hardly “ New York rich ”. The two protagonists share the same title Mrs.Dalloway and both stories take place within one day in June. They have a party to give; they haveflowers to purchase; they stop outside the florist s and cast a glance at some celebrityCu

37、nningham s Clarissa meets a movie star and Woolf s encounters a mysterious importantfigure, who turns out be Prince of Wales eventually; they encounter a friendon the road andreceive another on the way back home; their spouse get an exclusive14invitation and dine out without their company; and final

38、ly they hear thenews ofsomebody s death. Under the same title of Mrs. Dalloway, all ofthese similaritiescontribute to the intertextuality between the two texts.Vaughan and Dalloway share great similarities indeed, however, they still display somedivergence. The two Clarissa live in different backgro

39、unds, one in modern New York and theother in London 1923. Clarissa Dalloway struggles between the titles “ Mrs. Dalloway ” andClarissa” .It is apparent that Cunningham puts much emphasis on the selection ofnames of his characters. The name Clarissa Vaughan is associated with Woolf not only inresembl

40、ance with the name of the female character in her book, but also in that its surname derivesfrom Woolf s first crush on a woman Madge Vaughan. Therefore the name creates another layerof allusions to the Woolf novel. Clarissa s daughter Julia, a queer girl, has the same name asVirginia s mother. The

41、same is with other characters. Richard, an AIDS patient in The Hours, isMrs. Dalloway s husband in Woolf s novel. Sally, the lesbian partner of Clarissa Vaughan inThe Hours, is also the woman who arouses Clarissa Dalloway s first affection for female. Byborrowing and mixing the names of the characte

42、rs, Cunningham transforms Woolf s novel and enriches his own story. In this way, he establishes an intertextual bond with Wool s Mrs.Dalloway.Conclusion: According to Intertextuality:Theories and Practices,the theory of intertextuality insists that a text cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficien

43、t whole,and thus does not function as a closed system.There are two reasons which are sufficiently convincing.Firstly,before the writer becomes a creator of texts,he must have read a pile of texts which will unavoidably affect his own writing.Repetition of some phrases or even passages,reference to

44、some signifying images,deliberate adoption of quotation or parody all contribute to the inevitable involvement of the text with previous ones.Cunningham s work,for instance,is marked by his desire to produce a text in multiple purposes,either in memory of Mrs.Dalloway or paying homage to this great

45、masterpiece,and to reproduce a text combining element of Woolf together with his conception and creation.In fact,The Hours is an attempt at osmosis with the spirit of Virginia Woolf.In his novel,Cunningham draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of chara

46、cters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance,life and death,creation and destruction.The novel moves along with three separate but parallel stories,each focusing on the experiences of a particular woman during the course of one apparently unremarkable but in fact pivotal day.The prominent French structuralist critic Kristeva depersonalized a literary product by conceiving it to be an impersonal text instead of a simple work,and here The Hours is one typical example.This paper intends to give readers a number of interesting angles from which the