ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

Just as “Time Passes” is both lyric and narrative, a challenge to and a
confirmation of the limits of literary conventions, it is both separate from the rest of
To the Lighthouse and the binding force that creates the novel as a single narrative
whole. I have already argued that the use of summary in “Time Passes” marks that
section of the narrative as a sort of connecting tissue. Other critics have emphasized
the between-ness of this connecting tissue, its function of filling the gap between
dramatic scenes. Louis Kronenberger, in a 1927 New York Times review of To the
Lighthouse, calls “Time Passes” an “interlude” (Majumdar 197). More recent critics
have picked up the term (Abel 52; Briggs 131; Freedman 234; Leaska, Virginia 63).
The OED’s first definition of “interlude” reflects the word’s Latin etymology,
“between play”: a drama “usually of a light or humorous character” given between
the acts of a more serious morality or religious play. The second definition is more
general: “the pause between the acts, or the means (dramatic or musical) employed to
fill this up.” Both of these definitions suggest a middle whose role is to fill the
temporal space between parts of a larger whole through contrast and relaxation. The
Grove Dictionary of Music, however, suggests that the interlude serves as a link as
well as a break and a contrast: “In instrumental music an interlude is usually a short
connecting episode between movements rather than a movement in itself,” while “In
a theatrical performance an interlude consists of an instrumental item between acts
[...] or, on a more elaborate scale, an entertainment [...]. Debussy’s Pelléas et
Mélisande and Berg’s Wozzeck, for example, include important interludes that are
dramatically related, indeed essential, to the whole design” (Grove Music Online). In
both instrumental and dramatic music, then, the interlude is both separate from and
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