The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was a keen preserver of some Victorian values, and among these the art of Charles Dickens, with his representation of London, its voices, sounds, music and noises. Dickens’s Little Dorrit and its closing sentence opens up my critical track by suggesting that Woolf’s reconstruction of...

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Autor principal:	Francesca Orestano
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2021
Materias:	Victorian soundscape London sounds cries voices calls noises History of Great Britain DA1-995
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/77176d9718894d9ba012484117217b6f
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:77176d9718894d9ba012484117217b6f
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:77176d9718894d9ba012484117217b6f2021-12-02T10:08:59ZThe Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf0220-56102271-614910.4000/cve.9870https://doaj.org/article/77176d9718894d9ba012484117217b6f2021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttp://journals.openedition.org/cve/9870https://doaj.org/toc/0220-5610https://doaj.org/toc/2271-6149Virginia Woolf was a keen preserver of some Victorian values, and among these the art of Charles Dickens, with his representation of London, its voices, sounds, music and noises. Dickens’s Little Dorrit and its closing sentence opens up my critical track by suggesting that Woolf’s reconstruction of the past must give to Victorian sounds a role that is neither ancillary nor merely impressionistic. This article focuses on Woolf’s portrayal of Victorian urban life in her fiction, especially in The Years (1937), where London sounds are everywhere present and deployed to create the polyphony—an exciting cacophony in modernist terms—of the great city. In Woolf’s fiction sounds are meant to convey symbolic meanings, to bring myth to the foreground, while also adding to the realism of the text. Sounds function like the many voices of an organ—the baroque instrument par excellence—suggesting at once order and chaos, norm and transgression: they frame representation and yet also break the frame by directly affecting the reader. This effect of discordia concors as acoustic experience is implemented within the verbal context, emphasizing the dialogic relationship between the source of sound, its reception, and the performative function sounds obtain within the texture of The Years.Francesca OrestanoPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéearticleVictorian soundscapeLondon soundscriesvoicescallsnoisesHistory of Great BritainDA1-995ENFRCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, Vol 94 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	Victorian soundscape London sounds cries voices calls noises History of Great Britain DA1-995
spellingShingle	Victorian soundscape London sounds cries voices calls noises History of Great Britain DA1-995 Francesca Orestano The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf
description	Virginia Woolf was a keen preserver of some Victorian values, and among these the art of Charles Dickens, with his representation of London, its voices, sounds, music and noises. Dickens’s Little Dorrit and its closing sentence opens up my critical track by suggesting that Woolf’s reconstruction of the past must give to Victorian sounds a role that is neither ancillary nor merely impressionistic. This article focuses on Woolf’s portrayal of Victorian urban life in her fiction, especially in The Years (1937), where London sounds are everywhere present and deployed to create the polyphony—an exciting cacophony in modernist terms—of the great city. In Woolf’s fiction sounds are meant to convey symbolic meanings, to bring myth to the foreground, while also adding to the realism of the text. Sounds function like the many voices of an organ—the baroque instrument par excellence—suggesting at once order and chaos, norm and transgression: they frame representation and yet also break the frame by directly affecting the reader. This effect of discordia concors as acoustic experience is implemented within the verbal context, emphasizing the dialogic relationship between the source of sound, its reception, and the performative function sounds obtain within the texture of The Years.
format	article
author	Francesca Orestano
author_facet	Francesca Orestano
author_sort	Francesca Orestano
title	The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf
title_short	The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf
title_full	The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf
title_fullStr	The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf
title_full_unstemmed	The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf
title_sort	roaring streets: dickensian london in the pages of virginia woolf
publisher	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/77176d9718894d9ba012484117217b6f
work_keys_str_mv	AT francescaorestano theroaringstreetsdickensianlondoninthepagesofvirginiawoolf AT francescaorestano roaringstreetsdickensianlondoninthepagesofvirginiawoolf
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The Roaring Streets: Dickensian London in the Pages of Virginia Woolf

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