Abstract
M.A. (English)
This dissertation begins by examining the central tenets of Russian Formalism and American New Criticism. Although it is a term coined by the Russian Formalists, both these schools of thought, in their own ways, are concerned with literariness – that is, that which distinguishes the literary work from other forms of writing. This study traces the ways in which these two critical movements account for the specifically literary language that they claim characterises literary works. Based on the principles derived from these two schools I analyse aspects of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and demonstrate that defamiliarization is at work on various levels of this novel. Thereafter, I examine criticism pertaining to Woolf and illustrate that there are numerous illuminating parallels that can be drawn between recent critics’ studies on Woolf and the principles of the formalists. In particular, I attempt to show that the principle of estranged form continues to inform our critical thought about Woolf’s works. I focus primarily on the arguments posited in two critical studies: Edward Bishop’s Virginia Woolf (1991) and Oddvar Holmesland’s Form as Compensation for Life: Fictive Patterns in Virginia Woolf’s Novels (1998). These studies were selected because they centre on questions of language and form and, as such, coincide in a number of interesting ways with the tenets of formalism.