Narrative Technique

About the lecture

In this lecture, we look at Woolf's narrative technique in Mrs Dalloway, noting its radical departure from the narrative style of the Victorian novel. In particular, we explore the idea of free indirect style, which represents a kind a strange blend of the first- and third-person narrators that most of us are used to; the narrator speaks like a third-person narrator, but has access to the inner thoughts and emotions of characters like a first-person narrator. Free indirect style in explored in some detail with a study of one section of the novel, where Peter Walsh walks down the street reflecting on his meeting with Clarissa.

About the lecturer

Dr Sowon S Park is Lecturer in English at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford where she teaches Victorian literature, Modern British literature and Literary theory; previously she was Alice Tong Sze Research fellow in English at University of Cambridge and University lecturer in English at Ewha University, Seoul. Her publications include articles on Virginia Woolf; world literature; politics and aesthetics; and British suffrage literature, and she has jointly edited Women’s Suffrage Literature vol 1-6 (Routledge).