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Dialogic multivoicedness in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

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Abstract

Virginia Woolf constructs multi-voiced world with interdependent beings in her novels. Her fiction demonstrates her deep-seated preoccupation with pluralism in essence of human and non-human relationships. To the Lighthouse (1927) is a novel made out of dialogic confrontations between oppositional forces. This novel mainly shows Woolf’s philosophy of life which is devoid of solipsistic and close-ended point of view and is replete with trans-situational values and dialogic intersections. The interconnected world in this novel is mirrored in the intertwined minds of the characters through stream of consciousness, multilateral depiction of confrontation between self and other, and various representation of time. The present paper aims to investigate variant aspects of interrelations between different forces in mentioned novel in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s views on dialogism and polyvocality. This paper also argues that dialogic relations in To the Lighthouse are not limited to the human world and include non-human world as well.

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Correspondence to Somaye Mostafaei.

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Mostafaei, S., Elahipanah, N. Dialogic multivoicedness in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Neohelicon 45, 807–819 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-0419-z

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