"My Words Echo Thus In Your Mind:" Cyclical Time and Memory in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad

Thumbnail
Name:
3639_christina.baulch.pdf
Size:
3.913Mb
Format:
PDF
Download
Cast your vote
 
Your vote was cast
Thank you for your feedback
Author
BAULCH, Christina
Keyword
First Reader Anthony P. Domestico
Senior Project
Semester Spring 2019
Readers/Advisors
Domestico, Anthony
Term and Year
Spring 2019
Date Published
2019

Metadata
Show full item record
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/14177
Abstract
This Senior Project traces cyclical, non-linear representations of time and memory in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, and Alain Resnais's 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad. In addition to close analysis of these texts in their own right, the essay ties in theory from other discourses, looking at how memory is viewed through a philosophical perspective, how it functions cognitively, as well as artistically across these mediums. Such theorists range from Saint Augustine, Gaston Bachelard, to even the contemporary journalist Alan Burdick. At the crux of the argument is the realization that memory is always "both and," endlessly ineffable and uncategorizable. In Eliot and Woolf, for instance, memory at first strikes us as something of beauty. Moments of ecstatic joy are not condemned to the past, but through memory can be re-experienced and felt as present again. When we tie-in Last Year at Marienbad, though, we recognize that memory for all these authors is also what Edmund Burke refers to as "sublime," something so powerful we associate it with fear and horror. Memory allows us to relive what we love, but it also haunts us, refusing to let us escape what we don't.
Accessibility Statement
Purchase College - State University of New York (PC) is committed to ensuring that people with disabilities have an opportunity equal to that of their nondisabled peers to participate in the College's programs, benefits, and services, including those delivered through electronic and information technology. If you encounter an access barrier with a specific item and have a remediation request, please contact lib.ir@purchase.edu.
Collections