Художня специфіка модерністської прози В. Вулф

The thesis analyses the Ukrainian and foreign theories of modernism and underlines that modernist experiments concerned mainly the form of literary works. The opposed terms «tradition - innovations» are considered in the context of modernism.

Virginia Woolf is recognized as a modernist writer who attempted to break with nineteenth century literary conventions. Using innovative methods of fractured narrative and chronology and experimenting with stream-of-consciousness in order to explain the psychological and emotional motives of characters, awarded Woolf a place in a literary canon of the 20^th century.

The thesis traces the development of Woolf's modernist aesthetics in her non-fiction. Starting from Virginia Woolf's early creative works she conceived a literary style capable of abstracting from purely formal elements a more «profound reality» than that captured by objective and representational descriptions. She was obviously rebelling against the realism valued by her Victorian and Edwardian predecessors such as A. Bennett, G. Wells and J. Galsworthy. Woolf's theoretical essays «Modern fiction», «Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown» and «A room of One's Own» allows for a starting point in the definition of «modernism» and «modernist». The thesis also points out and draws the link between contemporary philosophical and science discoveries and Woolf's modernist fiction.

With reference to recent literary theorists and critics, philosophers and researchers the thesis establishes that Virginia Woolf constructed her works using her own modernist literary principles. Moreover we observe a new formal experimentation in each of Woolf's novel. The main chapter of the thesis is constructed as the research of three Virginia Woolf's novels - «Mrs. Dalloway», «To the Lighthouse» and «Orlando». Dissertator pays a special attention to those modernist aspects of the novels which are essential for the theme of the thesis. They are temporal modification of the novel, intermediality and modernist search in the genre of biography.

In the novel «Mrs. Dalloway» Virginia Woolf makes an effort to construct her own temporal model - a concentrate and spiritual time. Although «Mrs. Dalloway» has a form of a «one day novel», it spans a lifetime by means of numerous retrospections. The consciousnesses of the characters are interlaced forming a complex unity. Although the writer has not divided her novel into chapters she marked the beginning of new episodes by clock striking. Woolf also uses numerous reiterations which forms a resonating structure of the novel.

An analysis of the chronotopes of Woolf's novels proves her attempt to break the traditional, predominantly linear form of narrative.

The thesis points out an intermediality as a particular intermedial relation between conventionally distinct media of expression or communication in V. Woolf's literary works. In our case intermediality is observed as a fusion of painting and literature. It is considered that post-impressionist painting played an important role in Woolf`s prose. The English writer was inspired by impressionistic sensation of space and colour. The famous painter R. Fry influenced W. Woolf by his visual aesthetics. «To the Lighthouse» is a brilliant example of intermediality and impressionistic mode of thinking in Virginia Woolf's prose.

The novel «Orlando» is V. Woolf's formal experimentation in the genre of biography. Virginia Woolf is an author of two critic essays which deals with a genre of biography - «The New Biography» and «The Art of Biography». As manifestation of her modernist ideas on a biography the writer created a new kind of this genre which combined fact and fiction. «Orlando» is a parodic biography of Virginia Woolf's friend Vita Sackville-West.

The conclusions of the thesis unfold the perspective for further research of feminist discourse, intertextuality, poetics of Virginia Woolf's prose etc.

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