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This thesis explores the importance of the visionary experience in five novels by Virginia Woolf. In her fiction, Woolf portrays the phenomenal world as constantly changing and she uses the cycles of nature and the passing of time as a terrifying backdrop against which the mutability and transience of human life are set. Faced with the inevitability of change and the fact of mortality, the individual seeks moments of permanence. These stand in opposition to flux and lead to the experience of a visionary intensity. Woolf's presentation of time as a qualitative phenomenon and her stress on the importance of memory as a function which allows for the intermingling of past and present make possible the narrative rendering of moments which contradict perpetual change and the rigours of sequential time. Moments of stillness 'occur in the midst of and in spite of process and allow for individual contact with an experience that defies the relentless progression of time. Necessary for this experience is not only memory but also the imagination, a faculty which has the power to perceive patterns of harmony in the midst of the chaos that characterises the phenomenal realm. Fundamental to Woolf's writing, however, is the acknowledgement that visions are fleeting, as are the glimpses of meaning that emerge from them. Therefore, while several of her novels describe the artistic effort to create a structured order as a defense against change, Woolf uses the artist's struggle as a metaphor for the difficulties attached to describing the enigma that is life. None of her artist figures is able to formulate a construction that either sums up life or provides a permanence of vision. This study presents a chronological examination of the novels in order to demonstrate that the changing forms of Woolf's fiction trace the evolution of a style that accurately portrays both the workings of the human mind and the insubstantial and fragmentary nature of life. The chronology also reveals that her novels develop in terms of their presentations of the visionary experience. Woolf's final novel incorporates into its central vision the paradoxical fact of the permanence of time's progression and acknowledges that, beyond the individually mutable life, is a continuum that links pre-history to the future. This notion, which is explored in part in the earlier novels, but developed completely in Between the Acts, suggests that consolation can be found in the greater cycles of existence despite the fact of individual mortality.

The general theme of this thesis is Paternity and the Search for Knowledge in the works of James Joyce and Marcel Proust, specifically, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Two main sets of characters are compared in the novels; the young artists, or would-be artists, Stephen and Marcel, and the older, experienced men-of-the-world who become their mentors, Bloom and Swann. Both young artists must overcome a fear of the physical world which tends to make them ineffectual dreamers, self-romanticizers. Stephen has been taught to deny the physical side of his nature by family and society. Marcel's fear of suffering and overdependence on others also has its origin in his family life. Neither young poet can create until he has been immersed in the physical experience of life, and has attained that knowledge of good and evil in himself and others which is the goal of his quest. Bloom and Swann are ‘father-figures’ in two senses; they 'educate' the young lads by initiating them into life, and they are themselves very much involved in the cycles of physical creation. Their roles are discussed in the light of various mythologies; specifically; Classical, Medieval, and Jewish. An intensive study of flower imagery in the three novels helps to elucidate further their roles as 'Earth-Fathers.' / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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