the art of balance: corpus assisted stylistic Analysis of Woolfian Parallelism in To the Lighthouse

International Journal of English Studies
UMVERSITV OF MURCIA

http://revistas.um.es/ijes

The Art of Balance:
A Corpus-assisted Stylistic Analysis of Woolfian Parallelism in
To the Lighthouse
MINGZHU ZHAO

Minzu University of China
Received: 5 February 2012 / Accepted: 6 July 2012
ABSTRACT
This study has a two-fold objective: 1) to examine the density and variety of parallelism in Virginia Woolfs landmark novel To the Lighthouse through a sample-based comparison between this novel and other representative modernist novels; 2) to discuss the specific lexical and syntactic structures that characterize
WoolFs parallelism. The results are extracted from a corpus-assisted reading and sampled textual analysis of her work. It shows that Woolfian parallelism is defined by an abundance of antithetical and synonymous lexical bundles, juxtaposed propositional phrases, -ing participles and appositional structures. Those structures constitute her special sentential development which is marked by the rhetoric of opposition, the rhetoric of simultaneity and progression, and the rhetoric of specificity. It is concluded that in To the Lighthouse, Woolf manipulates the above-mentioned linguistic resources to strike an artistic balance between poetry and prose, order and chaos, the physical reality and the mental world, and finally achieves what she calls "a feminine sentence". KEYWORDS:
To the Lighthouse, Woolfian parallelism, corpus-assisted analysis, feminine sentence.

RESUMEN
El presente estudio persigue un doble objetivo: 1) examinar la densidad y la variedad de paralelismo en la paradigmática novela de Virginia V/oo\( Al faro a través de una comparación por fragmentos entre esta novela y otras representativas del Modernismo; 2) explorar las estructuras específicas léxicas y sintácticas que caracterizan el paralelismo de Woolf. Los resultados se extraen a partir de una lectura basada en concordancias y análisis textuales de extractos de su obra. Muestra cómo el paralelismo

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