Conclusion
Michael Cunningham’s The Hours have a intertextual referential relationship with Virginia Wolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This intertextual relationship, in one aspect, lies in the symbolic, characters’ thematic reinterpretations adopting quotation, allusion, pastiche, modify and other forms of intertextuality; in the other aspect, refers to relations about the authors themselves and the authors as readers’ position in interpreting texts as social texts historical texts. Through this kinds of analyses, The Hours achieves the administrative levels’ going forward from texts, subjects’to cultures dialogs; beside of these, Michael Cunningham also shows the solicitudes for mental and physical conditions of femininity which Wolf has manifest in her masterpiece, and have a remolding on the classical fiction. As Yale Book Review said, Cunningham has completed an impossible mission in The Hours: he reprocesses a masterpiece by adopting a standard literary technology, and creates his own work.
Thus Cunningham uses repetition to create connections not just within his text but also with Woolf’s text or texts. By doing so, Woolf’s writing is given new life. It is here that Michael Cunningham has touched at the very heart of Virginia Woolf’s style. Jacques Raverat’s suggestion to Virginia Woolf that the writer could experiment with words in a fashion similar to contemporary painters, could equally apply to The
41
Hours:“There are splashes in the outer air in every direction, and under the surface waves that follow one another into dark and forgotten corners‖
[14]
.The echoes, like waves, ripple outwards creating new
meanings as they do so. By imitating this aspect of Woolf’s style, Cunningham is able both to invite the reader to ―only connect‖, but at the same time to produce a novel that, as it progresses, takes on a life of its own, with its own storyline and impetus, with everything falling into place in the final chapters.
42
Biography
[1] Allen G, Intertextuality [M], London. Routledge, 2000.
[2] William Irwin. Against Intertextuality. Philosophy and Literature[C]. v28, Number 2, October 2004: 228.
[3] Julia Kristeva, Word, Dialogue, and Novel. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, [M]. Leon S. Roudiez, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) 66.
[4] 赵一凡.欧美新学赏析[M]，中央编译出版社，1996年版，142.
[5] Julia Kristeva Interviews [M]. Ross Mitchell Guberman, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
[6] Orr M. Intertextuality: debates and contexts [A]. Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003:4
[7] Li Jianbo. An intertextual reading of E.M Forster’s Novels [J]. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2001:5.
[8] 王琛. 《时时刻刻》的互文性研究[D]. 大连理工大学. 2007 (01):1. [9] Virginia Wolf. Mrs. Dalloway [M]. New York: Penguin USA (P), 1996. [10] Michael Cunningham. The Hours [M]. New York: Picador USA, 2000. [11] Linda Hutcheon. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms. New York: Methuen, 1985: 32.
[12] 宋文. 在现代和后现代之间女性的城市境遇—评迈克尔〃坎宁汉的《时时刻刻》[J], 当代外国文学, 2006（03）：4.
[13] 王家湘. 时时刻刻: 译者的话[J]. 南京：译林出版社, 2008. 8.
[14] Quentin Bell. Virginia Woolf: A Biography II [M]. London: Hogarth, 1972: 106.
43
Acknowledgements
Associate Professor Tang Zi, is the person whom I owe most thanks to, for she is my teacher particularly specialized in literature and she draws my great interests in literary works; what’s more, it is she who inspires me to start the search and research for the topic, and also for her eternal tolerance to my dilatory dissertation. My gratitude would also extend to all the other teachers in my four graduates years in Huaihua College. I also appreciate my friends and roommates a lot who supported and motivated me while my disserting. Last but not least, I owe a deep debt to my loving parents, who supported me with selfless love, and without whom this thesis would be a sheer mission impossible. Thank you all.
44