Between the Acts : a step beyond the traditional historical novel

Vol.35,No.1(2009)

Aylin Atilla

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/105125

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Abstract
Virginia Woolf's posthumously published novel Between the Acts (1941) dramatizes history as the living past through the framed pageant which mainly offers a condensed history of English Literature. Between the Acts historicizes history by resisting the attractions of the traditional historical novel genre. It grasps history as an ideological process that produces and includes the forces of capitalism, fascism and patriarchy. Woolf attempts to achieve a unified self by reenacting not only the art of the novelist or dramatist but of the historian as well - both in shaping of a comprehensible record of events and also in the critique of explanatory myths and other popular conceptions of the past. This paper reexamines Between the Acts as a late experimental development within the tradition of English historical fiction at a time when writing history convincingly in the established forms was impossible due to the outbreak of a war which was threatening the world.

Keywords:
Virginia Woolf; Between the Acts; history; writer / historian; English literary past; modern historical novel

Pages:
77–85
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