The Hours | Style
Literary Allusions
A literary allusion is a reference in one work to other works of literature. Cunningham's allusions to the characters and themes in Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway give his own work a frame of reference with meaningful parallels if his reader already knows the literature and historical characters to which he refers, in this case the novel Mrs. Dalloway and the historical Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Clarissa's day parallels that of Mrs. Dalloway as she buys flowers for the party she is giving that evening. The lives of the three women are...
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