Polyphonic Elegiac Lament over Percival in The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Polyphonic Elegiac Lament over Percival in The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Summary/Abstract: The groundbreaking “play-poem” "The Waves" has attracted much critical acclaim due to the innovativeness of the form. While endorsing the claims on Woolf’s experimentation, the present article suggests that ancient traditions and modes are discernible within the innovative narration of grief. The thematic scope involving the death of the major character, Percival, is argued to be a major reason for prioritising the fifth section of "The Waves" as the midpoint, and indeed the central point, of the narration. The formula of mourning contained in this section is investigated alongside the ekphrastic set-piece description of noon preceding it. Subsequently, the elegiac lament over Percival found in Section V is examined, with the analysis based on the references to tragic or pastoral traditions known and deployed in European literature since antiquity. This particular fragment of "The Waves" is argued to constitute a modernist version of prose elegy, being a literary rendition of a polyphonic lament in which each subsequent part differs in terms of mode and rhetoric. The paper examines how much the form and the premise of the elegiac triad of lamentation– confrontation–consolation predetermine the choice of the elegiac speakers: Neville – the pastoral, elegiac mourner; Bernard – the eulogist and chief representative of the community; and Rhoda – a performer of the rites of leave-taking.narration's midpoint, and indeed the central point

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