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1、A Wagner Matinee Willa Cather 13IV. Portrait of an ActressAbout the authorWoolf -Virginia (Stephen) Woolf, 1882 1941, English novelist. She was an innovative influence on the 20th-cent. novel. With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she set up the Hogarth Press in 1917. Their home was the center for the BL
2、OOMSBURY GROUUP. In her writing she concentrated on the flow of ordinary experience through the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS technique. Her prose is poetic, symbolic, and visual. Woolfs novels include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (
3、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 Ones Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938).Virginia Woolf revolted against what she called the materialism of major British novelists of the early 19
4、00s. By this she meant their preoccupation with outward, visible events. She felt it was more important to show the inner essence of a character in fiction by revealing the characters thoughts and concentrating on precise, significant details about him. She followed the path which James Joyce had op
5、ened up, and then branched off in a new direction. Virginia Woolfs 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 close
6、d to women. Her point of view was always progressive and open-minded, and she encouraged others to liberate their minds likewise.In her works, Virginia Woolf wanted to emphasize the continuous flow of peoples experiences in life, and to show how external circumstances only affect a person to the deg
7、ree 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 present tense, yet flows unbroken through the years and centuries. In her most popular novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To The Light
8、house, 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 use of very long sentences, difficult syntax and large vocabulary sometim
9、es make her books hard to read.Background notesBloomsbury Group - Bloomsbury is a section of London, near the British Museum and the universities, with several squares and small parks surrounded by private houses. The name was given to a number of British writers, philosophers and artists who lived
10、there and met for informal discussions at each others houses between 1907 and 1930. They discussed questions of art and philosophy with open minds, seeking the definitions of good, true and beautiful. They examined all ideas commonly held by the society, looking for elements of insincerity and false
11、 logic. They did not form a single school of thought, although they shared many ideas. The groups 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 conservatism of Br
12、itish society in matters of religion, morality and art, and they sought truth through the use of reason.Virginia Woolf was one of the first members. Others members included Lytton STRACHEY, Leonard WOOLF, E.M. FORSTER, V. SACKVILLE-WEST, Roger FRY, Clive Bell, and John Maynard KEYNES.stream of consc
13、iousness - Literary technique for recording the thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to their logical association or narrative sequence. The writer attempts to reflect all the forces affecting the psychology of a character at a single moment. Introduced by the French writer Edouard Du
14、jardin in Well to the Woods No More (1888), the technique was used notably by James JOYCE, Virginia WOOLF and William FAULKNER.About the textcome on - appear on or move to (the stage)When Lawrence Oliver came on for the first time, the audience applauded.The next player came on five minutes late.Peo
15、ple clapped and shouted and made her come on again and again.4 Captain Brassbounds Conversion - a play written by George Bernard Shaw.4 the stage collapsed like a house of cards -This is of course metaphorical. The ides is that when Ellen Terry appeared on the stage as Lady Cicely, it was as if the
16、stage had suddenly ceased to exist. She was the central figure, casting all the other actors into the shade.4 a ripe, richly seasoned “cello” - A cello made of elaborately seasoned wood, that is, wood made specially hard for use. Season: - to harden (wood) to make it ready for use by drying it gradually: These
