THE LYRICISM OF THE VOYAGE OUT
THE LYRICISM OF THE VOYAGE OUT

Summary/Abstract: Is Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out a traditional or experimental novel? The aim of this article is to show that this novel contains features of both. Judging from some of its features and themes, it can be analysed in the same way that one might analyse poetry. Woolf’s use of previously known texts, especially Romantic lyric poetry, but also other poems and plays, will be examined in order to see when and how they are used to create a lyrical novel. The Voyage Out revels in a freedom for the mixture of various literary genres. Woolf uses this mixture to bring the lyrical aspect into the foreground, especially when characters reflect about life. Multiple perspectives on what happens in the novel resonate with the view common in poetry that a character’s personality is fragmented, not coherent. The symbolic dimension of characters achieving a coherent vision on life through communication or other experiences again resonates with poetry.

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