The Voyage Out: Water in Nostalgic Art : A Corpus-Assisted Study of the Nostalgic Tropes of Water in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to examine nostalgic art through the usage of water tropes in Virginia Woolf’s 1915 novel The Voyage Out. Previous research on nostalgic aesthetics found that tropes play a crucial role in eliciting nostalgic emotions in the reader. These studies were primarily conducted using close reading approaches. Therefore, it is important to experiment with corpus methods to determine how they can aid this method in future analyses. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to present corpus techniques in nostalgic art as a new method for assisting in understanding authorial style. Moreover, this study employs The Voyage Out as a text file to study potential tropes via the corpus techniques. This thesis adds to the study of Woolf’s works by providing new insights intonature, notably water-related themes, in her style, as well as filling a gap in Woolf’s first debut that has been overlooked by previous academics. The findings of this study suggest that using corpus techniques such as frequencies and concordance lines as an assistant provided fresh insights into the novel by displaying frequent water elements that are used as tropes, as well as by locating examples swiftly and effortlessly.