To the Lighthouse

Woolf, Virginia

ISBN 10 : 1480560197 ISBN 13 : 9781480560192

Editeur : Brilliance Audio, 2014

Synopsis

To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting ysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramsays and their its to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman ( Moulin Rouge , Eyes Wide Shut ), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours , brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.

Split into three parts, the story observes Mrs. Ramsay, Mr. Ramsay, and their children at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye. While the novel follows seemingly trivial events between the family members, the plot takes a backseat to philosophical introspection, which gave the novel its fame as an icon of modernist literature. The Ramsays' quest to recapture meaning creates a powerful allegory of man’s impermanent battle with the tangible world.

To the Lighthouse is part of Audible’s A-List Collection, featuring the world’s most celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star helped select.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

The two children sailing with their father find something unexpected.

While protesting being forced to come along, they find their father has changed. Instead of dealing harsh criticism (as expected by the boy) the father gives his son praise. A rare empathy develops. The daughter changes also, from resentment to admiration.

What proceeded this resolution is complex. Woolf brings this story to you as she unwraps the complicated story of an English family and the central icon of the family summer home at the base of a lighthouse. The novel centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

Style

Warning, if you are not a fan of stream-of-consciousness prose, this is not an easy read. However, it is often judged as Woolf's masterpiece.

Cited as a key example of the stream-of-consciousness literary technique, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations.

Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot is secondary to its philosophical introspection.

This is not a book to read a few minutes here and there. Perhaps difficult to follow at first, you can quickly become so immersed in the scene and the feeling Woolf conveys that you find yourself swept fully into her world.

Woolf's stream of consciousness writing style is truly incredible. It is like reading thoughts. Her genius is in the absolute basic- she brings so much into a novel that only spans two days, transporting the reader into an entire lifetime's worth of emotional depth.

To the Lighthouse is a somewhat disjointed story, possessing numerous characters, points-of-view and conflicts. The overlapping and separation of the characters and their stories seems to result from both intention and oversight and is a product of what Woolf referred to as "all characters boiled down," and the "break of unity in my design."

Themes

The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's themes are those of loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception.

Interacting with Mrs. Ramsey is the character most representative of Woolf, herself, Lily Briscoe, a young girl who is staying in the same beachouse as the Ramseys. Unmarried, Lily draws both disapproval and sympathy from Mrs. Ramsey who firmly believes that "an unmarried woman has missed the best of life."

Mrs. Ramsey and Lily represent the conflict between the Victorian and the Edwardian eras, the age of the woman in the home and the advent of the woman in the workplace.

An intelligent young woman, as well as a sensitive and talented artist, Lily is very aware of Mrs. Ramsey's disapproval.

The role of art in the novel deals primarily with Post-Impressionism and the attempt to freeze reality, not on paper or on canvas, but in the mind, and then to paint the very equivalent of this reality.

The need for connection in the painting is much like the need for connection in the narrative. And Lily and Mrs. Ramsey both serve to fulfill the role as unifier.

Why You Should Read This Book (Again.)

Woolf's books invoke an Impressionistic style of writing which is unmatched, except perhaps by James Joyce.

To have this book available is to allow yourself a break from the hard, modern nuts-and-bolts approach so uniformly common these days.

Her work has to be enjoyed not just due to her mastery of the language, but her ability to transport you to another world instantly. You become enveloped in this family, although you share only two days with them subjectively.

It is a break from the real world like no other you have experienced.

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Quatrième de couverture

The text of this edition of To the Lighthouse is that of the English page proofs corrected by Virginia Woolf for the first American edition. This text comes closer than any previously published to presenting the novel as Woolf intended it. All the corrections she made on the page proofs are reproduced, and the punctuation of the proofs is retained. A list of variants is included in which significant passages cancelled or revised on the proofs, along with all substantive variants in the first English and American editions are recorded.

Among the many interesting passages that Woolf revised or deleted on the proofs is a long and previously unpublished account, cast as a memory of his son James, of Mr. Ramsay Lecturing in London while his children sit dutifully in the Audience. Virginia Woolf′s corrected typescript of part two, ′Time Passes′, prepared b Woolf for Charles Mauron, whose translation ′Le Temps Passe′ appeared in the French periodical Commerce in 1926, is also included.

In the introduction the editor discusses the genesis of To the Lighthouse, its autobiographical and biographical elements, and the history of its critical reception.

First published in 1927, To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf′s fifth novel and the one in which she became, as she said, ′mistress of her medium′. A story of family life, it is based on vivid memories of her childhood. Although she set the story on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides, the house and landscape she was writing about were Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall, where her family spend their summers until her mother′s death in 1895, when Virginia Woolf was thirteen. Woolf′s father, Sir Leslie Stephen – philosopher, critic, and editor – served as a model for Mr Ramsay, While Mrs Ramsay was drawn from Woolf′s memories of her mother, Julia Stephen, an intelligent and beautiful woman long remembered in St Ives for her good works there. The complex fusion of autobiography, biography, and fiction resulted in a work which has become a classic of modern literature.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Brilliance Audio
• Date d'édition: 2014
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1480560197
• ISBN 13: 9781480560192
• Reliure: MP3 CD
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible