Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse: An Introduction (3/3)

This lecture covers the last two sections of To the Lighthouse, "Time Passes" and "The Lighthouse".

Detailed introduction to and analysis of Woolf's most beautiful novel. The lectures cover ways in which the novel can be seen as autobiographical. The relation of Woolf's fiction to Heidegger's phenomenology of time is explored. Woolf's narrative technique of "free indirect discourse" is examined. The lectures then systematically go through the novel highlighting key themes, such as: the quarrel of philosophy and poetry, the gathering together of phenomena that is the soul, the question of the meaning of life and Woolf's concept of "moments of being" as described in the novel.

0:00 - Introduction
0:52 - "Time Passes" -- Death of Mrs. Ramsay
2:50 - Deaths of Prue and Andrew Ramsay
4:22 - Metaphor of dead leaves in the epic tradition: Iliad, Aeneid, Inferno, Paradise Lost, The Waste Land and To the Lighthouse
9:04 - The "human shape" as way things have meaning
12:27 - "The Lighthouse" and the question of meaning
15:06 - On the power of the human soul to make meaning
20:20 - Violets and Asphodels
21:45 - Conclusion: Mrs. Ramsay, Moments of Being, Philosophy and Poetry in Marriage

Related Lectures: