ETD

• defence mechanism
• English literature
• modernism
• narrative
• psychoanalysis
• sublimation
• Woolf

In the present study, we undertake and conduct a thorough and profound exploration of the selected works of several prominent authors of the British Modernism, with a special emphasis put upon those of Virginia Woolf. By means of a concise consideration of the most essential aspects and categories of psychoanalysis, theorised mainly by S. and A. Freud, C. G. Jung and J. Lacan, and through the method of a close diachronic analysis of Virginia Woolf’s biographical facts besides the literary material itself, we try to elicit the defining yet traumatic milestones in Virginia Woolf’s life, and trace it to her oeuvre. In this manner, a series of themes and recurrent motives that marked Woolf’s novels and short stories, is being interpreted according to the relevant psychoanalytical categories – principally, to the defence mechanism theory. It allows us to discern the nature of Woolf’s literary implementation of psychoanalytical methods, its personal as well as artistic significance, and its thematic determination. In such manner, a series of approaches is being tested and called into question, until we manage to theorise and concretise the proper correlation between the specific themes and motives of Woolf’s written material, and the underlying psychological processes – conscious or unconscious – which had designed its shape within certain short stories and novels.