«Orts, scraps and fragments»: En studie av romlige motiv og troper i Virginia Woolfs Between the Acts

Abstract

This thesis is a study of spatial motifs and tropes in Virginia Woolf’s novel Between the Acts (1941). Through the method of close reading with a theoretical foundation in concepts from Gérard Genette’s narratology and Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, this thesis explores how Woolf uses poetic images to create multifaceted spatial connections throughout her novel. This thesis also examines how Woolf’s representation of different spaces in the novel interrupts and undermines the linear succession of events in the story. Through a spatial reading of a selection of spesific spaces in Pointz Hall, such as the family home, the view, the landscape, the nature and the lily pond, and a spatial reading of a selection of poetic images, this thesis aims to show how the ficitonal universe in Between the Acts, constitutes a world characterized by continuous movement where everything is connected to everything, but where there exists no final or fixed totality. Between the Acts is a novel where «orts, scraps and fragments» enables a complex and ambigous multiplicity of spaces which constantly change and become part of new connections.