Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is a British female writer who enjoys worldwide reputation and one of the representatives of "stream of consciousness" novels.His father, Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), was a famous biographer and literary critic. His original wife was the daughter of the novelist Thackeray, and Virginia was born to his second wife, Julia Dekworth.Stephen attaches great importance to the education of his children. Therefore, Virginia not only has a solid foundation in English, but also is well-read, proficient in Latin, and has a high degree of cultural accomplishment and aesthetic concepts.Stephen often entertained the luminaries of the literary world at his home, or invited them to his beach house for the summer.Every weekend, his home is always full of friends and talents.Hardy, Ruskin, Meredith, Henry James, Edmund Goss and other famous writers are all his guests.Virginia has been exposed to it since she was a child and has benefited a lot.Later, she was able to start a family outstandingly, which was not unrelated to her family background.

Stephen died in 1904, and the Virginia family moved to Bromsbury, the cultural center of London.Virginia has a patriarchal legacy and has a wide range of contacts. Through her elder brother Soapy Stephen, she met many young scholars, and novelist E. M. Foster, poet T. S. Eliot, artist Roger Frye, literary critic Desmond McCarthy, economist Keynes, young writer Mortimer and other times have passed, and her home has become a gathering place for scholars and literati.Virginia often discussed literature, art, and philosophy with these friends, and later people called them the Bromsbury Group.Since Virginia usually associates with the elites of the academic world, she has formed a unique creative style after learning from each other, and her artistic level is extremely high.

In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Hogarth Woolf of the Bromsbury Group.Leonard is an economist and political commentator, very literary.In 1917, the Woolfs founded Hogarth Publishing House, which introduced the works of poet Eliot, novelist Forster, biographer Strachey, short story writer Mansfield and Virginia herself.These young rookies in the literary world later became well-known masters in the universe. It can be seen that the art appreciation ability of these two publishers is indeed extraordinary. Virginia Woolf's debut novel "The Voyage" came out in 1915, and she began her creative career since then.Her works include "Night and Day", "Jacob's Room", "The Common Reader", "To the Lighthouse", "Orlando", "The Years", "Between the Acts" and so on.Virginia was a serious artist, tirelessly exploring the possibilities of reforming the form of the novel, both theoretically and creatively.Virginia was already suffering from depression, and writing so hard made her neurasthenia worse.In 1941, the first draft of "Between the Act" was completed. She was dissatisfied with the results of her exploration and experimentation, and German fascist planes bombed her house and publishing house in London. Rodmir of Sykes threw himself into the river.

In the first half of this century, "stream of consciousness" novels became a very influential literary genre in the West, represented by Proust in France, Joyce in Ireland, Woolf in England and Faulkner.At present, although it no longer exists as a genre, some of its expression techniques have been widely adopted by writers of various genres, and spread to various fields such as film and drama. Therefore, it is an unavoidable part of our study of modern Western culture. topic.The famous French writer Moloya said: "Time is the only critic, and it has indisputable authority: it can make the reputation that seemed solid and solid at that time disappear; it can also consolidate the reputation that people once thought was fragile. Come down.” Her work continued to be published or reprinted after Woolf’s death, and her interest in her critical and academic interest continued.During the three years from 1969 to 1972, more than 100 monographs and monographs on Woolf were published in the United States alone.For such a writer affirmed by time and history, we cannot but study it seriously.

If we are to study Woolf, we must consider her theories as well as her novels, for she was not only an accomplished novelist but also a famous critic.She is a special contributor to "Times Literary Supplement", "Yale Review", "New York Herald Tribune", "Atlantic Monthly" and other important newspapers and magazines. In her life, she has written more than 350 papers, essays and book review.After her death, Leonard Woolf included these essays in four volumes of Selected Works of Woolf.Woolf's criticism range is extremely wide, but mainly novel reviews.As a novelist, she discusses the art of fiction, and she has a deep understanding of the ups and downs involved, so she is often able to grasp key issues, express unique insights, and avoid superficial empty theories.Even some readers who don't like "stream of consciousness" novels are very welcome to Woolf's review articles, because these articles are written kindly and vividly, which can help them understand and appreciate the art of novels more deeply.For researchers of literary theory and novel creation, they are even more valuable reference materials, which can help them understand the differences between modern Western novels and traditional novels, understand the characteristics and limitations of modern Western novels, and the development and changes of novel genres various possibilities.Therefore, I have selected and translated some of Woolf's articles on novels and novelists for the readers.

The articles selected and translated in this book can be roughly divided into several types.The first two articles are outline works. The Common Reader illustrates Woolf's critical methods and attitudes.She does not speak in the capacity of a scholar or a professor, but in the capacity of an ordinary reader to talk with us, pointing out to us the strengths, flaws or problems of a work, a writer or a genre with eloquent words. "On Modern Fiction" shows her basic tendency.She pointed out that the center of gravity of modern novels must be shifted, from "materialism" that sees things but not people to "spiritualism" that emphasizes psychological activities, and from the reflection of the external world to the expression of the structure of consciousness.

The second group of four articles is a discussion of British women's novels.Woolf is not only a believer in modernism, but also a pioneer of feminism.Her democratic ideas led her to empathize with the oppressed poor and women.In her article, she discussed the brilliant achievements of several female writers and pointed out their limitations.On the one hand, she complained about the unfair treatment of women writers; on the other hand, she predicted with confidence that once women get the basic rights they have been deprived of, they will definitely dabble in a wider range of literature. field, to write novels of better quality.

The third group of six articles is Woolf's comments on several British writers of different genres from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.People tend to think that modernist writers are obliterating realist literature.However, it is not.Woolf spoke highly of the realist writers Defoe and Hardy, but criticized the modernist writers Lawrence and Joyce.What she opposed was not realism, but materialism or naturalism.From this group of papers, we can clearly see Woolf's attitude of fully respecting her country's literary tradition. The fourth group of papers shows that Woolf is not only good at inheriting the traditions of her own country, but also absorbs rich nutrition from excellent writers in Russia, France and the United States.She believes that the eyes of Russian novelists can penetrate the flesh and blood and reveal the soul. At the same time, they raise some difficult and important questions to life, which makes Russian novels have an open ending and leaves readers with room for thinking.In addition, Woolf found in modern fiction a major change in point of view and method of perspective.From the perspective of "omniscient and omnipotent", traditional novelists provide us with a portrait of the objective world, which is a perspective method that reflects objective reality.Proust in France and Henry James in the United States do not provide us with a direct image of the objective world, but a projection of the objective world on the screen of the character's consciousness, an inner memory, feeling or impression, which It is a perspective method to express subjective reality.

The fifth group of articles involves Woolf's criticism of the traditional way of writing novels, the evaluation of the achievements of modernist novels, and the prediction of the future development direction of novels.Western critics generally believe that Woolf's three major essays expounding her views on modernism are "On Modern Fiction", "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown", and "The Narrow Bridge of Art".Scholars in our country often repeatedly quote certain points of view in the first two papers, while ignoring the important paper behind.Woolf pointed out in the paper "The Narrow Bridge of Art" that due to the changes of the times, the traditional form of novels is no longer suitable for expressing the minds of modern people, and future novels may be a comprehensive literary form, a kind of Poetic, impersonal, dramatic fiction.If we link this paper with the previous groups of papers, it is not difficult to find that Woolf was inspired by the poetic dramas of the Elizabethan era, traditional British novels, and psychological novels of Russia, France, and the United States. Putting forward her assumptions about the future direction of novel development.In other words, Woolf's modern novel theory is by no means a water without a source or a tree without roots, but a certain inheritance and development of traditional western culture under the new social and historical conditions.

Woolf wrote several times more essays and book reviews than papers.For the discussion of theoretical issues, short and concise book reviews are of course not as comprehensive and profound as long papers.But Woolf's book reviews are lively and funny, and there are many figurative metaphors in them. For a work, no matter whether he criticizes or praises it, he always holds a reason and makes sense, making people feel kind, vivid and meaningful. persuasive.We selected and translated two book reviews at the end, and we can get a glimpse of the whole picture, and we may be able to appreciate the special flavor of Woolf's book reviews.

This book mainly introduces Woolf's reviews of novels and essays of novelists, so some famous essays are not included.For example, "Letters to a Young Poet" is about poetry, "The Leaning Tower" is not about the creation of the novel itself, but about the changing situation of the writer and the feelings of dissatisfaction and guilt that result from it. Essays like this , we discarded it. "On Sterne" is an important treatise, but Sterne's novel has not yet been translated, and Woolf has written about the author several times in other essays; "On the Novels of Turgenev" is also A very good thesis, Turgenev's serious creative attitude, beautiful and moving prose style, and perfect structural form have an influence on Woolf, however, this influence is not the same as that of Tolstoy, Chekhov , Dostoevsky's influence cannot be compared, therefore, we also give up on papers like this.Nevertheless, I can say that I have basically introduced Woolf's more major essays on the art of the novel. In addition, at the end of the book, the translator's articles on Woolf's theory of fiction are appended, which analyzes and summarizes the main arguments scattered in Woolf's essays and diaries, so that readers can get a clearer understanding of Woolf's theory of fiction. , A complete overview, leaving a deep and lasting impression. Woolf is known for her beautiful writing style.Mortimer said: "No one has ever written prose as good as Woolf's." Perhaps this was not a compliment.However, Woolf likes to write extremely long sentences, with complex syntactic structures and often eccentric words.It is indeed tricky to translate such text.First of all, beautiful style is difficult to convey in translation, which Woolf himself has discussed in his article "Russian Viewpoint".As for very long compound sentences, if you dismember them into simple sentences, it will save effort to read, but this will become a Chinese-style syntax, which is not at all like Woolf's essay.Therefore, the translator tries to keep the original sentence structure as much as possible, which is indeed more difficult to read, but it may be more faithful to the original text.