[Vwoolf] "What a lark! What a plunge!" (Could Woolf have had the bird in mind?)

[Victoria Rosner]

“Skylarking” reminds me that there are larks in the sky in Mrs. Dalloway that are not birds, as well.  

From Mrs. Dempsey’s point of view, the plane she sees flying overhead also larks and plunges: “it soared and shot... It swept and fell,” and the paragraph ends with a bird on the ground — a thrush rather than a lark, but still “adventurous.”

Victoria 

> On Jun 29, 2020, at 6:28 AM, Christine Froula via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
> 
> ...and, finding bird and play (duplicitous in the instance, alas) together in VW's mind, we have the girl in the news account of the rape in Between the Acts, "skylarking" with the troopers... with thanks to Stuart's "The Horse with the Green Tail"...
> 
> Christine
> 
>> On 6/29/2020 5:20 AM, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:
>> But not always in Italy:
>> 
>> up with the cock (Guilia Celenza, 1965)
>> 
>> up with the dawn (Anna Luisa Zazo, 1994)
>> 
>> up with the lark (Luciana Bianciardi, 1995)
>> 
>> 
>> Personally, I agree with Sir Harcourt Courtly in Boucicault's "London Assurance":
>> 
>> MAX: You must leave your town habits in the smoke of London; here we rise with the lark.
>> SIR HARCOURT: Haven't the remotest conception when that period is.
>> 
>> 
>> Stuart
>> (Day 104)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message----- From: Stephen Barkway via Vwoolf
>> Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 10:51 AM
>> To: 'Jeremy Hawthorn' ; vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] "What a lark! What a plunge!" (Could Woolf have hadthe bird in mind?)
>> 
>> As opposed to the opening page of To the Lighthouse, where the ‘lark’ is definitely a bird!
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf
>> Sent: 29 June 2020 09:10
>> To: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] "What a lark! What a plunge!" (Could Woolf have had the bird in mind?)
>> 
>> I agree that the dominant meaning of "lark" here is "a bit of fun."
>> Etymologically this is unconnected to lark=bird; "laiking" is Yorkshire and Lancashire dialect for playing (as opposed to working), and "lark"
>> both as verb and noun is related to modern Norwegian "å leke": to play (Woolf would not have known this but Joyce might!). Partridge relates the word to ON leika and OE lācan. (Insert joke here about Lacan and the play of the signifier.)
>> 
>> But I have often wondered whether there might also be a hint at the bird, which is characterized by rapid ascending and descending vertical movements, hence plunging. Bird and cognates appear 20 times in the novel, and Scrope Purvis thinks that there is a touch of the bird about Clarissa - although he goes on to mention not a lark but a jay, a very different bird.
>> 
>> Jeremy H
>> 
>> 
>>> On 29.06.2020 06:32, Regina Marler via Vwoolf wrote:
>>> Not the bird, I think. A lark, as in a bit of fun. A plunge, as in the
>>> moment one dares something: plunging into adventure.
>>> 
>>> All best,
>>> 
>>> Regina
>> 
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