Blending and characters' mental functioning in Virginia Woolf's Lappin and Lapinova.
In this article I apply Fauconnier and Turner's (2002) theory of conceptual integration, or blending, to the analysis of a central aspect of the main characters’ mental lives in Virginia Woolf's story ‘Lappin and Lapinova’. The female protagonist of the story, Rosalind, has difficulties adjusting to her role as the new wife of Ernest Thorburn, and therefore constructs an alternative fantasy world where Ernest is a rabbit king called Lappin. At the beginning of their married life, Rosalind and Ernest develop this fantasy world together, and add to it a counterpart for Rosalind herself – a hare called Queen Lapinova. With the passing of time, Ernest loses interest in the fantasy, but Rosalind becomes increasingly dependent on it, so that Ernest's announcement of Lapinova's death at the end of the story also results in the ‘end’ of their marriage. In my analysis, I show how the ‘rabbit’ fantasy world can be described in terms of what Fauconnier and Turner (2002) call a conceptual integration network: a dynam...