Fragmentation in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Abstract

Fragmentation is one of the most important narrative techniques used by modernist writers. This inquiry attempts to demonstrate the applicability of such a literary device on the modernist novel To the Lighthouse, written by Virginia Woolf in 1927; thus, we attempt to figure out how fragmentation affects the tactfulness of the language in the novel. We also tend to explore its usefulness for modernists in managing the plot of the literary work to create suspense and engage the readers’ perspectives. Based on the hypothesis of the significance of fragmentation in the process of nonlinearity and variation in modernist literature, this study is structured upon a theoretical part in which we investigate the foundations of the technique as well as a pragmatic approach to fragmentation in the novel. In addition to a an analysis of aesthetic standards that influence fragmentation in To the Lighthouse