School of Graduate Research Student Theses

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The Multivalent Moment in Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s L’abandon à la Providence divine and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
(2019) Barclay, Daryl James
The thesis draws on two contrasting print texts in which the experience of the moment as focalising present is addressed substantially: Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s 1861 spiritual treatise, L’abandon à la Providence divine, and Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. The research enquired into how the experience of the moment might be better understood by comparing two apparently dissimilar approaches to it. Subquestions were developed to clarify specific aspects of the research. A qualitative, interpretive, and comparative approach was adopted. The raw data consisted of 200 references to the word moment which were grouped under categories representing conceptual similarities. These categories were subjected to further qualitative analysis and detailed comparison. The study found that the conceptual overlap between the two texts is substantial, especially in the categories of transcendence, epiphanies, eternity and self-abandonment. The potential for comparative analysis across other sets of texts was also affirmed by this project’s methodology.