In this critical study, Tidwell examines the conflict of aesthetics and politics in The Diary of Virginia Woolf. As a modernist writer concerned with contemporary aesthetic theories, Woolf experimented with limiting the representative nature of writing. At the same time, as a feminist, Woolf wanted to incorporate her political interests in her fiction, but overt political statement conflicted with her aesthetic ideals. Her solution was to combine innovative narrative techniques and subject matter traditionally associated with women. Tidwell analyzes several of Woolf’s novels, including To the Lighthouse, Jacob’s Room, and Between the Acts to elucidate the diary’s technique and form, as well as to cast it as a valuable contribution to Woolf’s canon.
Jane Goldman offers a revisionary, feminist reading of Woolf's work. Focusing on Woolf's engagement with the artistic theories of her time, Goldman analyses Woolf's fascination with the Post-impressionist exhibition of 1920 and the solar eclipse of 1927 by linking her response to a much wider literary and cultural context. Lavishly illustrated with colour pictures, this book will appeal not only to scholars working on Woolf, but also to students of modernism, art history, and women's studies.
What is the role of the author in times of crisis? Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form examines how Virginia Woolf, Samuel R. Delany, and J. M. Coetzee developed literary strategies in common to cope with crisis periods they were anticipating, living through, or looking back on. Matthew Cheney outlines how the three writers shaped their art to create an author/audience relationship congruent with the goals of critical pedagogy espoused by such thinkers as Paulo Freire and bell hooks. Seeking to stimulate ethical thought, Woolf, Delany, and Coetzee required their readers to be active interpreters of their texts' forms, contents, and contexts. By pushing against fiction's fictionality, these writers of very different backgrounds, geographies, privileges, situations, tastes, and styles discovered complex ways to address the world wars in England, the AIDS crisis in New York, and apartheid in South Africa, going so far as to question the value of fiction itself.
This volume asks how Woolf conceptualized peace by exploring various experimental forms she created in response to violence and crisis. Across fifteen chapters written by an international array of scholars, this book draws out theoretical dimensions of Woolf’s aesthetics and deepens our understanding of her writing about war, ethics, feminism and European culture.
The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts is the most authoritative and up-to-date guide to Virginia Woolf's artistic influences and associations. In original, extensive and newly researched chapters by internationally recognised authors, the Companion explores Woolf's ideas about creativity and the nature of art in the context of the recent 'turn to the visual' in modernist studies with its focus on visual technologies and the significance of material production. The in-depth chapters place Woolf's work in relation to the most influential aesthetic theories and artistic practices, including Bloomsbury aesthetics, art and race, Vanessa Bell and painting, art galleries, theatre, music, dance, fashion, entertaining, garden and book design, broadcasting, film, and photography. No previous book concerned with Woolf and the arts has been so wide ranging or has paid such close attention to both public and domestic art forms.Illustrated with 16 olour as well as 39 black and white illustrations and with guides to further reading, the Companion will be an essential reference work for scholars, students and the general public.Key Features* An essential reference tool for all those working on or interested in Virginia Woolf, the arts, visual culture and modernist studies* Provides a new intellectual framework for the exciting discoveries of the past decades*Draws on archival and historical research into Virginia Woolf's manuscripts and her Bloomsbury milieu*Original chapters from expert contributors newly commissioned by Maggie Humm, widely known for her important work on Virginia Woolf and visual culture*Combines broad synthesis and original reflection setting Woolf's work in historical, cultural and artistic contexts
Provides a pioneering interdisciplinary overview of the literature and music of nine centuriesOffers research essays by literary specialists and musicologists that provides access to the best current interdisciplinary scholarship on connections between literature and musicIncludes five historical sections from the Middle Ages to the present, with editorial introductions to enhance understanding of relationships between literature and music in each periodCharts and extends work in this expanding interdisciplinary field to provide an essential resource for researchers with an interest in literature and other mediaBringing together seventy-one newly commissioned original chapters by literary specialists and musicologists, this book presents the most recent interdisciplinary research into literature and music. In five parts, the chapters cover the Middle Ages to the present. The volume introduction and methodology chapters define key concepts for investigating the interdependence of these two art forms and a concluding chapter looks to the future of this interdisciplinary field. An editorial introduction to each historical part explains the main features of the relationships between literature and music in the period and outlines recent developments in scholarship. Contributions represent a multiplicity of approaches: theoretical, contextual and close reading. Case studies reach beyond literature and music to engage with related fields including philosophy, history of science, theatre, broadcast media and popular culture.This trailblazing companion charts and extends the work in this expanding interdisciplinary field and is an essential resource for researchers with an interest in literature and other media.
The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible. Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Rancière's work to date, ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age. Available now in the Bloomsbury Revelations series 10 years after its original publication, The Politics of Aesthetics includes an afterword by Slavoj Zizek, an interview for the English edition, a glossary of technical terms and an extensive bibliography.
Virginia Woolf was one of the most significant literary figures of the twentieth century—a major literary stylist and a lyrical novelist whose stream-of-consciousness approach in iconic books such as Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando would inspire generations of writers to follow. She was also one of the first to address the injustices of gender disparity and the ravages of World War I at home. Uncovering new details about Woolf’s life and the places she inhabited, this engaging biography offers fresh insights into her works and legacy, focusing on the ways place and imagination intertwine in her writing. Drawing on Woolf’s letters, journals, diaries, autobiographical essays, and fiction, Ira Nadel paints a portrait of the writer in situ, whether in the enclosed surroundings of Hyde Park Gate or the open and free-spirited environs of Gordon Square’s Bloomsbury. He shows how Woolf’s experimental style was informed by her own reading life and how her deeply sensitive understanding of history, narrative, art, and friendship were rendered in her prose. He explores the famous Bloomsbury group of intellectuals in which she was immersed as well as her relationships with fascinating figures such as Vita Sackville-West and Lady Ottoline Morrel. Nadel looks at Woolf’s attitudes toward sex and marriage, analyzes her uncertain social and political views, and, finally, offers a sensitive examination of her mental instabilities and the nervous breakdowns that would plague her for most of her life, up until her suicide in 1941. A moving account of an exceptional writer who ushered in a new era of literature, this biography perfectly captures the intricate relationship between art and life.
