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.

This thesis aims to address the Greek attitude to their dream experience in the classical period, as it was conceived in theories and engaged with in dream practices. The emphasis is on the relationship between these elements and the wider cultural frames which surrounded them, in order both to illustrate the manner in which culture influences the conception of dreams, and also to use dreams themselves as a mirror to reflect parts of Greek culture. As a study it has been heavily shaped by the approaches to dreams developed by anthropologists, outlined in Chapter 2, who have emphasised the importance of studying dreams intra-culturally. In Chapter 3 I analyse the language that the Greeks used to express their dreaming experience, drawing from it the important way in which language was both determined by, and determined, the Greeks' understanding of the phenomenon. This forms a base for engaging with dream theories in Chapter 4, both the implicit allusions in literature and explicit explanations proposed by philosophers and medical writers. I then explore the theories at work within Greek culture via dreams as we see them active in the lived religion of the polis: I examine in Chapter 5 the dedications set up by individuals on account of spontaneous dreams, and in Chapter 6 the practice of incubation. I then turn to examine specific relationships: in Chapter 7, the association of dreams with status, i.e. the possibility that powerful people would have equally powerful dreams; in Chapter 8, dreams and gender, assessing the possibility that women considered their dreams to be more important than their male counterparts. In Chapter 9, I position dreams within the context of the other divinatory practices of the period, which allows us to see the unique ways in which dream practices functioned in comparison to the other divinatory forms.

This thesis is concerned with engaging a critic who has been neglected by his peers in the field of Joyce studies for more than forty years. This critic, Joseph Campbell, is an American scholar more popularly known for his studies in myth. However, he began his intellectual career contributing to a subject that emerged in the early years of the critical reception of Finnegans Wake: that the dream depicted in Joyce???s final masterpiece is dependent on a Dreamer. The neglect Campbell???s work has endured is largely due, this thesis argues, to an inaccurate treatment of his reading of this dream figure. This inaccuracy largely stems from a critic, Clive Hart, who engages with the debate of the Dreamer as an introductory means to demonstrating the ???structural??? theories involved in the Wake. As a minor feature of Hart???s analysis, Campbell???s theory of the Dreamer is identified with another method, one belonging to a fellow American Joycean, Edmund Wilson, a method incongruent with Campbell theories of dream consciousness. Subsequently, Campbell remains an undeveloped scholar within Joyce criticism. To counter Hart???s inaccurate depiction of Campbell, this thesis argues that there is provision in early scholarship to re-evaluate Campbell???s theory of the Dreamer in more developed terms. In this respect, the thesis is divided up into three sections. The first section is a literary review of this early scholarship, demonstrating certain influential strains of thought equivalent to Campbell???s ???metaphoric??? concept of the Dreamer, one that contrasts with the rigid, ???literal??? ideas his work is predominantly identified. The second section examines Campbell???s account in detail and the specific criticism it drew from Hart. Finally, the third section argues that Campbell???s interpretation of the Dreamer is best engaged through an archetypal account of the Dreamer, one that regards the symbols encountered in the Wake through the ???guiding??? features of a mythological concept of the psyche sensitive to the reflexive tendencies of the dream portrayed, Campbell???s ???cosmogonic cycle???.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Bibliography: leaves107-116.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with engaging a critic who has been neglected by his peers in the field of Joyce studies for more than forty years. This critic, Joseph Campbell, is an American scholar more popularly known for his studies in myth. However, he began his intellectual career contributing to a subject that emerged in the early years of the critical reception of Finnegans Wake: that the dream depicted in Joyce???s final masterpiece is dependent on a Dreamer. The neglect Campbell???s work has endured is largely due, this thesis argues, to an inaccurate treatment of his reading of this dream figure. This inaccuracy largely stems from a critic, Clive Hart, who engages with the debate of the Dreamer as an introductory means to demonstrating the ???structural??? theories involved in the Wake. As a minor feature of Hart???s analysis, Campbell???s theory of the Dreamer is identified with another method, one belonging to a fellow American Joycean, Edmund Wilson, a method incongruent with Campbell theories of dream consciousness. Subsequently, Campbell remains an undeveloped scholar within Joyce criticism. To counter Hart???s inaccurate depiction of Campbell, this thesis argues that there is provision in early scholarship to re-evaluate Campbell???s theory of the Dreamer in more developed terms. In this respect, the thesis is divided up into three sections. The first section is a literary review of this early scholarship, demonstrating certain influential strains of thought equivalent to Campbell???s ???metaphoric??? concept of the Dreamer, one that contrasts with the rigid, ???literal??? ideas his work is predominantly identified. The second section examines Campbell???s account in detail and the specific criticism it drew from Hart. Finally, the third section argues that Campbell???s interpretation of the Dreamer is best engaged through an archetypal account of the Dreamer, one that regards the symbols encountered in the Wake through the ???guiding??? features of a mythological concept of the psyche sensitive to the reflexive tendencies of the dream portrayed, Campbell???s ???cosmogonic cycle???.

Thesis (Doctoral)--Université de Caen/Basse-Normandie, U.F.R. sciences de l'homme, spécialité langue et littérature française, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (master's)--Universität Heidelberg, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-142).

Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [507]-525).

Thesis--University of Illinois. / Without thesis note. Bibliography: p. [192]-199.