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Article: Carnivalesque comedy in 'Between the Acts.'.(novel by woman author Virginia Woolf)
- Article from:
- Twentieth Century Literature
- Article date:
- December 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Hofstra University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Writing of her composition of Between the Acts, Woolf noted simply in her diary, "I'm playing with words (5: 290). If we read Between the Acts attentive to such play, we discover a work full of humor, laughter, and comedy. As in so much of Woolf's fiction, the tone of lyric seriousness (here associated primarily with Isa's poetic musings) risks obscuring the rich comedy; surely Woolf's humor has escaped many readers. Yet the spirit of linguistic play and the importance of humor to the work are signaled on the opening page where the narrator identifies the apparent sound of a nightingale - bird of myth, poetry, and pathos - as actually only "a daylight bird, chuckling. . . ...