Molly Hite
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714450
- eISBN:
- 9781501714474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714450.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter introduces the idea of tonal cues and considers how they work to guide readers’ affective responses—or are muted, contradictory or simply absent--in what is perhaps Woolf’s best-known ...
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This chapter introduces the idea of tonal cues and considers how they work to guide readers’ affective responses—or are muted, contradictory or simply absent--in what is perhaps Woolf’s best-known novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Contrasting examples come from other canonical modernist literary works and from the fiction of Elizabeth Robins, the feminist precursor on whom this study focuses. The discussion emphasizes how tonal ambiguity in Mrs. Dalloway complicates readers’ understanding of and value judgments about the climax as well as individual characters.Less
This chapter introduces the idea of tonal cues and considers how they work to guide readers’ affective responses—or are muted, contradictory or simply absent--in what is perhaps Woolf’s best-known novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Contrasting examples come from other canonical modernist literary works and from the fiction of Elizabeth Robins, the feminist precursor on whom this study focuses. The discussion emphasizes how tonal ambiguity in Mrs. Dalloway complicates readers’ understanding of and value judgments about the climax as well as individual characters.
Molly Hite
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714450
- eISBN:
- 9781501714474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714450.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers tone in three of Woolf’s very different narrative experiments. The discussions of each novel suggest how tonal cues both enable and destabilize ethical judgments that readers ...
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This chapter considers tone in three of Woolf’s very different narrative experiments. The discussions of each novel suggest how tonal cues both enable and destabilize ethical judgments that readers can feel justified in making. The chapter closes with a section addressing an apparently paradoxical question: What might be good about the ethical uncertainty that Woolf’s writing can prompt?Less
This chapter considers tone in three of Woolf’s very different narrative experiments. The discussions of each novel suggest how tonal cues both enable and destabilize ethical judgments that readers can feel justified in making. The chapter closes with a section addressing an apparently paradoxical question: What might be good about the ethical uncertainty that Woolf’s writing can prompt?
Molly Hite
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714450
- eISBN:
- 9781501714474
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714450.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This study argues that the greatest formal innovation in Virginia Woolf’s fiction is the muting, complicating or effacing of tonal cues: textual pointers guiding how readers feel and make ethical ...
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This study argues that the greatest formal innovation in Virginia Woolf’s fiction is the muting, complicating or effacing of tonal cues: textual pointers guiding how readers feel and make ethical judgments about characters and events. Much of Woolf’s narrative prose thus refrains from endorsing a single position, not only adding value ambiguity to the cognitive ambiguity associated with modernist fiction generally, but explicitly rejecting the polemical intent of feminist novelists in the generation preceding her own. This book contends that these novelists, especially the writer, actress and feminist activist Elizabeth Robins, influenced some of Woolf’s most important writings. In A Room of One’s Own Woolf borrowed arguments and examples from Robins’ prior polemical essay Ancilla’s Share. In Mrs. Dalloway and The Voyage Out she implicitly criticized Robins by revising her precursor’s major themes, using tonal ambiguity to introduce new perspectives. But Woolf reconsidered her rejection of polemical fiction later in her career. In the unfinished draft of her “essay-novel” The Pargiters, she created a brilliant new narrative form allowing her to make unequivocal value judgments.Less
This study argues that the greatest formal innovation in Virginia Woolf’s fiction is the muting, complicating or effacing of tonal cues: textual pointers guiding how readers feel and make ethical judgments about characters and events. Much of Woolf’s narrative prose thus refrains from endorsing a single position, not only adding value ambiguity to the cognitive ambiguity associated with modernist fiction generally, but explicitly rejecting the polemical intent of feminist novelists in the generation preceding her own. This book contends that these novelists, especially the writer, actress and feminist activist Elizabeth Robins, influenced some of Woolf’s most important writings. In A Room of One’s Own Woolf borrowed arguments and examples from Robins’ prior polemical essay Ancilla’s Share. In Mrs. Dalloway and The Voyage Out she implicitly criticized Robins by revising her precursor’s major themes, using tonal ambiguity to introduce new perspectives. But Woolf reconsidered her rejection of polemical fiction later in her career. In the unfinished draft of her “essay-novel” The Pargiters, she created a brilliant new narrative form allowing her to make unequivocal value judgments.
Karl Pajusalu
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- June 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780198767664
- eISBN:
- 9780191821516
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198767664.003.0043
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Language Families, Historical Linguistics
Finno-Ugric languages have been called quantity languages, because most of them have a phonological opposition of short and long durations. Finno-Ugric languages are usually characterized by a fixed ...
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Finno-Ugric languages have been called quantity languages, because most of them have a phonological opposition of short and long durations. Finno-Ugric languages are usually characterized by a fixed word-initial stress and distinctive quantity alternations. The most thoroughly studied Finno-Ugric languages, i.e. Hungarian and Finnish, have indeed such prosodic characteristics. However, several Finno-Ugric languages are characterized by various patterns of rhythmic word stress, quantity oppositions which co-occur with tonal cues, a tendency for stress- or foot-timing, etc. Such prosodic oppositions have an important role in complex morphophonological word paradigms. Sentence intonation is usually falling in the Finno-Ugric languages. Nevertheless, recent studies, such as on Hungarian and Estonian, indicate that there is a rather complicated interaction between the focus structure, syntax, and sentence prosody.Less
Finno-Ugric languages have been called quantity languages, because most of them have a phonological opposition of short and long durations. Finno-Ugric languages are usually characterized by a fixed word-initial stress and distinctive quantity alternations. The most thoroughly studied Finno-Ugric languages, i.e. Hungarian and Finnish, have indeed such prosodic characteristics. However, several Finno-Ugric languages are characterized by various patterns of rhythmic word stress, quantity oppositions which co-occur with tonal cues, a tendency for stress- or foot-timing, etc. Such prosodic oppositions have an important role in complex morphophonological word paradigms. Sentence intonation is usually falling in the Finno-Ugric languages. Nevertheless, recent studies, such as on Hungarian and Estonian, indicate that there is a rather complicated interaction between the focus structure, syntax, and sentence prosody.
