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2 - Virginia Woolf and Christianity
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- By Jane de Gay
- Edited by Suzanne Hobson, Queen Mary University of London, Andrew Radford, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 20 October 2023
- Print publication:
- 31 January 2023, pp 35-49
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Summary
FOR MANY DECADES, Virginia Woolf was regarded as an atheist who was hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular. After all, she declared T. S. Eliot ‘dead to us all’ on becoming an Anglo-Catholic, adding that ‘there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God’; she shouted ‘I hate religion!’ at Ethel Smyth after hearing her Mass in D; and in her late memoir ‘A Sketch of the Past’, she stated that ‘certainly and emphatically there is no God’. Yet, these statements can all be counterbalanced with others: her admiration of Beatrice Webb for having ‘causes in her life: prayer, principle’; her curiosity about Ethel Smyth’s faith, ‘How I’d like to see what you see when I say Heaven!’; and her many speculative comments about the existence of God, even if it is to suggest that he must be cruel if he exists at all (on the General Strike: ‘What one prays for is God […] to say kiss & be friends’; on her headaches: ‘he smashed his fist on my head. Lord, I said, I will write. Then he altogether took from me the power of adding word to word’). Recent scholarship has moved beyond the slogans to present a more nuanced and complex view of Woolf and religion: Pericles Lewis included her among novelists who were interested in ‘re-enchantment’, and Stephanie Paulsell, Kathleen Heininge and the author of this chapter have suggested that Woolf may have been more curious and open-minded about religion than had been assumed. Paulsell points out that when Woolf’s anti-religious statements are used as ‘the only lens through which to examine Woolf’s relationship to religion, they serve to obscure her lifelong interest in it, its influence on her writing and the religious dimensions of her own literary project’.
4 - Rhythms of Revision and Revisiting: Unpicking the Past in Orlando
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- By Jane de Gay
- Edited by Elsa Högberg, Uppsala University, Amy Bromley, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- Sentencing Orlando
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 06 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 09 January 2018, pp 56-67
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Summary
Grass, the power seemed to say, going back with a ruler such as governesses use to the beginning, is all right; the hanging cups of fritillaries – admirable; the snaky flower – a thought, strong from a lady's pen, perhaps, but Wordsworth, no doubt, sanctions it; but – girls?
This sentence comes at a point of indecision and uncertainty for Orlando as a poet. Newly married to Shelmerdine and therefore suddenly finding respectability within nineteenth-century society, she seems to be freed to write. But then maybe she is not. She vacillates between daring to write and not daring; being forced to write, but refusing. When she writes, she does so hastily, prevaricating again as she re-reads her work, feels compelled to stop and then, in this sentence, is urged by the ‘spirit of the age’ to go back and reconsider what she has written. The oscillating rhythm of writing, re-reading and reviewing that shapes this sentence reflects the pattern of the wider episode. However, as this chapter will also contend, this rhythm characterises the structure of the book as a whole and shapes its treatment of literary history.
The sentence functions as a review of the foregoing lines, purportedly from Orlando's poem ‘The Oak Tree’, but actually a quotation from Vita Sackville-West's work The Land (1926):
And then I came to a field where the springing grass
Was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries,
Sullen and foreign-looking, the snaky flower,
Scarfed in dull purple, like Egyptian girls –
My chosen sentence works to reinterpret, erase and rewrite the quotation from The Land, through comments in the voice of the spirit of the Victorian age, or, more precisely, a ventriloquised voice projecting Orlando's beliefs about what her culture demands of her as a writer. As Orlando revisits the lines she has written, the sentence forces the reader to move backwards in the text and re-read the quotation too. It is a selective re-reading, for only the end-word of each line is chosen for comment. The spirit finds ‘grass’ acceptable and admires ‘fritillaries’. It hesitates at ‘snaky flower’, inadvertently drawing attention to its sexual overtones. The voice forgives Orlando for this image by accepting that the word ‘snaky’ is also used by Wordsworth, but questions the reference to ‘girls’.
Introduction
- Jane deGay, Tom Breckin, Anne Reus
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- Book:
- Virginia Woolf and Heritage
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 12 January 2018
- Print publication:
- 08 June 2017, pp viii-xii
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Summary
I've thought of an entirely new book: it may be two: Each more entirely new than the other. So my fortune gilds the future for me—if my father didn't leave me pearls, this was by way of a makeshift. (L3 344, 8th March 1927)
With these words, Virginia Woolf shared with Vita Sackville-West the first inkling of Orlando, a novel that would be deeply concerned with heritage: with history, genealogy, literary tradition, an ancient city, and a stately home. The lines also reveal Woolf 's rich, complex, and often conflicted relationship with heritage. Although Woolf was captivated by Vita, the handsome aristocrat, she was also sceptical of wealth and privilege and her tone here is somewhat competitive. She is ironic about Vita's inherited pearls, asserting instead her own “makeshift” inheritance: the vast intellectual heritage that had made her a writer and the wealth of English literature that she had first encountered through her father's recitations and his library. Yet, Woolf gave Vita a “makeshift” inheritance of her own in Orlando, a book that, as Nigel Nicolson wrote, “identified her with Knole for ever” thereby providing her with a “unique consolation for having been born a girl, for her exclusion from her inheritance, for her father's death earlier that year” (190). This strategy sits closely with Woolf 's call for women to “rewrite history” (AROO 45).
The papers in this book, which arise from a conference held at Leeds Trinity University (Yorkshire, UK) in June 2016, explore some of the complex dynamics of Virginia Woolf 's relationship with heritage, ranging across the themes of education and mentoring, heritage places and spaces, the literary and cultural past, the queer past, modernism and its relationship with heritage, the writing of lives and history. It also looks at ways in which later generations of writers from several cultures have traced their heritage from Woolf.
Heritage: A Debate
The collection opens with a challenging essay by Jane Goldman that invites us to consider the politics of what is meant by “heritage.” Goldman argues that the term is laden with implications of legal inheritance, patriarchal privilege and the exclusion of women, and that the “heritage industry” is a term that masks the appropriation or “plundering” of artefacts.
Personal Disaster and Emergency Support Networks of Older Adults in a Rural Community: Changes After Participation in a Preparedness Program
- Sato Ashida, Erin L. Robinson, Jane Gay, Lauren E. Slagel, Marizen R. Ramirez
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- Journal:
- Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness / Volume 11 / Issue 1 / February 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 January 2017, pp. 110-119
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Objective
Personal disaster and emergency support networks of rural older adults are described before and after participation in a disaster preparedness intervention, PrepWise.
MethodsAt baseline, a total of 194 disaster support network members were identified by 27 older adults in a rural Midwest community. After the intervention, these participants identified 232 support network members. Multilevel logistic regression models were constructed to identify characteristics of the network members and social interactions associated with support providers at baseline as well as newly added support sources after the PrepWise intervention.
ResultsMember and interaction characteristics associated with being identified as emergency support sources at baseline were as follows: family, lived in close proximity, weekly or more frequent contact, and being someone whom participants shared concerns with, trusted, and exchanged emotional support with. After receiving PrepWise, participants on average identified 3 new sources of emergency support within their networks. Support sources added at follow-up tended to be nonfamily members and those participants trusted.
ConclusionsEnhancements in personal emergency support networks occurred after the intervention. Understanding characteristics of the network members and social interactions may assist in identifying additional emergency support sources. Larger studies investigating the impacts of enhanced support networks on disaster-related behaviors and outcomes will be beneficial. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:110–119)
Motivating rural older residents to prepare for disasters: moving beyond personal benefits
- SATO ASHIDA, ERIN L. ROBINSON, JANE GAY, MARIZEN RAMIREZ
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 36 / Issue 10 / November 2016
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 20 August 2015, pp. 2117-2140
- Print publication:
- November 2016
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In the United States of America (USA), older adults in rural areas are at increased risk for adverse outcomes of disasters, partly due to medical needs, limited or long geographic distances from community resources, and less knowledge and motivation about preparedness steps. Older residents and ageing service providers in a rural community in the USA were interviewed regarding their perceptions about disasters and preparedness, and their reactions to the preparedness training programme using the concepts of the Extended Parallel Process Model. Participants generally indicated low motivation to engage in preparedness behaviours despite perceptions of personal risk and beliefs that preparedness behaviours were easy and could improve disaster outcomes. A theme of social relationships emerged from the data, with participants identifying social relationships as resources, barriers and motivators. People surrounding older adults can support or deter their preparedness behaviours, and sometimes elicit a desire to protect the wellbeing of others. Findings suggest two potential strategies to facilitate preparedness behaviours by moving beyond personal benefits: highlighting older adults' increased ability to protect the wellbeing of younger generations and their community by being prepared themselves, and engaging family, friends and neighbours in preparedness programmes to enhance the resilience of their social groups. Older adults in many cultures have a desire to contribute to their society. Novel and effective approaches to increase preparedness could target their social groups.
James Stephen's Anti-Slavery Politics: A Woolfian Inheritance
- from Networks of Affiliation: Foundations and Friends
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- By Jane de Gay, Trinity University
- Edited by Helen Wussow, Mary Ann Gillies
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- Book:
- Virginia Woolf and the Common(wealth) Reader
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2014, pp 27-32
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Summary
Many biographies of Virginia Woolf incorporate, at some point, a genealogy of her male Stephen ancestors: a succession of writers, lawyers, politicians, churchmen, and academics. If scholars accord them any relevance at all, it is often to follow Jane Marcus by classifying them as a patriarchal force that Woolf rejected. This paper seeks to uncover a more subtle and complex aspect of this legacy by focusing on a figure who does not feature in Marcus's genealogy: Woolf's great-grandfather, James (Jem) Stephen (1758-1832), MP and lawyer, Clapham Sect Evangelical and vociferous anti-slavery campaigner. While it would be easy to dismiss this Stephen as yet another representative of the patriarchal establishment that Woolf pitted herself against, his legacy is more complex than this for, despite his involvement in key pillars of patriarchy (law, religion and politics), his position was ambivalent and liminal.
James Stephen was not born into privilege, for his father, also James, was heavily in debt and the family spent time in prison because of it. As a result, Jem's education was severely disrupted for he was enrolled at several schools before financial difficulties forced him to leave. He started training for law in 1775, enrolling at Lincoln's Inn and studying at Marischal College, Aberdeen, but his studies were halted by financial problems after two years. He did not complete his legal training until 1782, having inherited money from his uncle William Stephen, a doctor and slave-trader based in St Kitts.
Additionally, as a young man, James Stephen did not exhibit the work ethic and puritan morals of the Evangelical he would become, because he “made no serious attempt to get into practice” after qualifying (Memoirs 415). Instead, he continued to study, he began to assemble a library of law books and conducted relationships with both “Maria Rivers” and Anna Stent. He fathered a child with “Maria” but then married Anna in June 1783. This “truly embarrassing and painful dilemma” (Memoirs 415), and the need to provide for his family, finally prompted him to take up a longstanding opportunity to use family connections to go to the West Indies and set up a legal practice. He therefore sailed alone to join his brother in St Kitts in the October of that year.
Challenging the Family Script: Woolf, the Stephen Family, and Victorian Evangelical Theology
- from History, Materiality, Multiplicity
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- By Jane de Gay, Trinity University
- Edited by Ann Martin, Kathryn Holland
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- Book:
- Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2013, pp 35-40
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Summary
It is well known that Virginia Woolf was a feminist who had little time for Christianity. She has often been described as an agnostic like her parents; more recently, she has been regarded as an atheist, on the basis of statements such as “certainly and emphatically there is no God” (MB 84). It is therefore curious that the Woolfs’ library at Washington State University includes a small but significant selection of books on religion. These have often been assumed to be Leonard's contribution to the collection but as this paper will demonstrate, a significant number of these works were Virginia's. The paper will show that she read some of those books with a detached, critical interest and that they informed her critique of patriarchy and its interconnections with organized religion.
The religious books in the Woolfs’ library include several that were written by her ancestors in the Stephen family. These formed part of Leslie Stephen's library that the young Virginia was given complete leave to explore and that she eventually inherited. The library is in part a chronicle of the family history of authorship for it showcases works by family members. Woolf's great-grandfather James Stephen is represented in the collection by his Considerations on Imprisonment for Debt. There are three editions of Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography by Woolf's grandfather Sir James Stephen. Works by Sir James's brother, Sir George Stephen, include The Life of Christ and two copies of his theologically literate novel, The Jesuit at Cambridge. Woolf's uncle James Fitzjames Stephen is represented by Essays by a Barrister and a collection of articles from the Saturday Review, Horae Sabbaticae. There is also a bound collection of pamphlets from the Metaphysical Society, including contributions from Fitzjames and Leslie. Her aunt C.E. Stephen is represented by two editions of Quaker Strongholds, Light Arising: Thoughts on the Central Radiance and a pamphlet criticizing Christian Science.
The collection also includes works the Stephens had owned, thus betraying the influence of the Clapham Sect, to which they belonged.
Contributors
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- By Rose Teteki Abbey, K. C. Abraham, David Tuesday Adamo, LeRoy H. Aden, Efrain Agosto, Victor Aguilan, Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Charanjit Kaur AjitSingh, Dorothy B E A Akoto, Giuseppe Alberigo, Daniel E. Albrecht, Ruth Albrecht, Daniel O. Aleshire, Urs Altermatt, Anand Amaladass, Michael Amaladoss, James N. Amanze, Lesley G. Anderson, Thomas C. Anderson, Victor Anderson, Hope S. Antone, María Pilar Aquino, Paula Arai, Victorio Araya Guillén, S. Wesley Ariarajah, Ellen T. Armour, Brett Gregory Armstrong, Atsuhiro Asano, Naim Stifan Ateek, Mahmoud Ayoub, John Alembillah Azumah, Mercedes L. García Bachmann, Irena Backus, J. Wayne Baker, Mieke Bal, Lewis V. Baldwin, William Barbieri, António Barbosa da Silva, David Basinger, Bolaji Olukemi Bateye, Oswald Bayer, Daniel H. Bays, Rosalie Beck, Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Guy-Thomas Bedouelle, Chorbishop Seely Beggiani, Wolfgang Behringer, Christopher M. Bellitto, Byard Bennett, Harold V. Bennett, Teresa Berger, Miguel A. Bernad, Henley Bernard, Alan E. Bernstein, Jon L. Berquist, Johannes Beutler, Ana María Bidegain, Matthew P. Binkewicz, Jennifer Bird, Joseph Blenkinsopp, Dmytro Bondarenko, Paulo Bonfatti, Riet en Pim Bons-Storm, Jessica A. Boon, Marcus J. Borg, Mark Bosco, Peter C. Bouteneff, François Bovon, William D. Bowman, Paul S. Boyer, David Brakke, Richard E. Brantley, Marcus Braybrooke, Ian Breward, Ênio José da Costa Brito, Jewel Spears Brooker, Johannes Brosseder, Nicholas Canfield Read Brown, Robert F. Brown, Pamela K. Brubaker, Walter Brueggemann, Bishop Colin O. Buchanan, Stanley M. Burgess, Amy Nelson Burnett, J. Patout Burns, David B. Burrell, David Buttrick, James P. Byrd, Lavinia Byrne, Gerado Caetano, Marcos Caldas, Alkiviadis Calivas, William J. Callahan, Salvatore Calomino, Euan K. Cameron, William S. Campbell, Marcelo Ayres Camurça, Daniel F. Caner, Paul E. Capetz, Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, Patrick W. Carey, Barbara Carvill, Hal Cauthron, Subhadra Mitra Channa, Mark D. Chapman, James H. Charlesworth, Kenneth R. Chase, Chen Zemin, Luciano Chianeque, Philip Chia Phin Yin, Francisca H. Chimhanda, Daniel Chiquete, John T. Chirban, Soobin Choi, Robert Choquette, Mita Choudhury, Gerald Christianson, John Chryssavgis, Sejong Chun, Esther Chung-Kim, Charles M. A. Clark, Elizabeth A. Clark, Sathianathan Clarke, Fred Cloud, John B. Cobb, W. Owen Cole, John A Coleman, John J. Collins, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Paul K. Conkin, Beth A. Conklin, Sean Connolly, Demetrios J. Constantelos, Michael A. Conway, Paula M. Cooey, Austin Cooper, Michael L. Cooper-White, Pamela Cooper-White, L. William Countryman, Sérgio Coutinho, Pamela Couture, Shannon Craigo-Snell, James L. Crenshaw, David Crowner, Humberto Horacio Cucchetti, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Elizabeth Mason Currier, Emmanuel Cutrone, Mary L. Daniel, David D. Daniels, Robert Darden, Rolf Darge, Isaiah Dau, Jeffry C. Davis, Jane Dawson, Valentin Dedji, John W. de Gruchy, Paul DeHart, Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Miguel A. De La Torre, George E. Demacopoulos, Thomas de Mayo, Leah DeVun, Beatriz de Vasconcellos Dias, Dennis C. Dickerson, John M. Dillon, Luis Miguel Donatello, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Susanna Drake, Jonathan A. Draper, N. Dreher Martin, Otto Dreydoppel, Angelyn Dries, A. J. Droge, Francis X. D'Sa, Marilyn Dunn, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, Rifaat Ebied, Mark J. Edwards, William H. Edwards, Leonard H. Ehrlich, Nancy L. Eiesland, Martin Elbel, J. Harold Ellens, Stephen Ellingson, Marvin M. Ellison, Robert Ellsberg, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Eldon Jay Epp, Peter C. Erb, Tassilo Erhardt, Maria Erling, Noel Leo Erskine, Gillian R. Evans, Virginia Fabella, Michael A. Fahey, Edward Farley, Margaret A. Farley, Wendy Farley, Robert Fastiggi, Seena Fazel, Duncan S. Ferguson, Helwar Figueroa, Paul Corby Finney, Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Thomas E. FitzGerald, John R. Fitzmier, Marie Therese Flanagan, Sabina Flanagan, Claude Flipo, Ronald B. Flowers, Carole Fontaine, David Ford, Mary Ford, Stephanie A. Ford, Jim Forest, William Franke, Robert M. Franklin, Ruth Franzén, Edward H. Friedman, Samuel Frouisou, Lorelei F. Fuchs, Jojo M. Fung, Inger Furseth, Richard R. Gaillardetz, Brandon Gallaher, China Galland, Mark Galli, Ismael García, Tharscisse Gatwa, Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Luis María Gavilanes del Castillo, Pavel L. Gavrilyuk, Volney P. Gay, Metropolitan Athanasios Geevargis, Kondothra M. George, Mary Gerhart, Simon Gikandi, Maurice Gilbert, Michael J. Gillgannon, Verónica Giménez Beliveau, Terryl Givens, Beth Glazier-McDonald, Philip Gleason, Menghun Goh, Brian Golding, Bishop Hilario M. Gomez, Michelle A. Gonzalez, Donald K. Gorrell, Roy Gottfried, Tamara Grdzelidze, Joel B. Green, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Cristina Grenholm, Herbert Griffiths, Eric W. Gritsch, Erich S. Gruen, Christoffer H. Grundmann, Paul H. Gundani, Jon P. Gunnemann, Petre Guran, Vidar L. Haanes, Jeremiah M. Hackett, Getatchew Haile, Douglas John Hall, Nicholas Hammond, Daphne Hampson, Jehu J. Hanciles, Barry Hankins, Jennifer Haraguchi, Stanley S. Harakas, Anthony John Harding, Conrad L. Harkins, J. William Harmless, Marjory Harper, Amir Harrak, Joel F. Harrington, Mark W. Harris, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Van A. Harvey, R. Chris Hassel, Jione Havea, Daniel Hawk, Diana L. Hayes, Leslie Hayes, Priscilla Hayner, S. Mark Heim, Simo Heininen, Richard P. Heitzenrater, Eila Helander, David Hempton, Scott H. Hendrix, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Gina Hens-Piazza, Carter Heyward, Nicholas J. Higham, David Hilliard, Norman A. Hjelm, Peter C. Hodgson, Arthur Holder, M. Jan Holton, Dwight N. Hopkins, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Po-Ho Huang, James Hudnut-Beumler, Jennifer S. Hughes, Leonard M. Hummel, Mary E. Hunt, Laennec Hurbon, Mark Hutchinson, Susan E. Hylen, Mary Beth Ingham, H. Larry Ingle, Dale T. Irvin, Jon Isaak, Paul John Isaak, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Hans Raun Iversen, Margaret C. Jacob, Arthur James, Maria Jansdotter-Samuelsson, David Jasper, Werner G. Jeanrond, Renée Jeffery, David Lyle Jeffrey, Theodore W. Jennings, David H. Jensen, Robin Margaret Jensen, David Jobling, Dale A. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Maxwell E. Johnson, Sarah Johnson, Mark D. Johnston, F. Stanley Jones, James William Jones, John R. Jones, Alissa Jones Nelson, Inge Jonsson, Jan Joosten, Elizabeth Judd, Mulambya Peggy Kabonde, Robert Kaggwa, Sylvester Kahakwa, Isaac Kalimi, Ogbu U. Kalu, Eunice Kamaara, Wayne C. Kannaday, Musimbi Kanyoro, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Kaufmann, Léon Nguapitshi Kayongo, Richard Kearney, Alice A. Keefe, Ralph Keen, Catherine Keller, Anthony J. Kelly, Karen Kennelly, Kathi Lynn Kern, Fergus Kerr, Edward Kessler, George Kilcourse, Heup Young Kim, Kim Sung-Hae, Kim Yong-Bock, Kim Yung Suk, Richard King, Thomas M. King, Robert M. Kingdon, Ross Kinsler, Hans G. Kippenberg, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Clifton Kirkpatrick, Leonid Kishkovsky, Nadieszda Kizenko, Jeffrey Klaiber, Hans-Josef Klauck, Sidney Knight, Samuel Kobia, Robert Kolb, Karla Ann Koll, Heikki Kotila, Donald Kraybill, Philip D. W. Krey, Yves Krumenacker, Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan, Simanga R. Kumalo, Peter Kuzmic, Simon Shui-Man Kwan, Kwok Pui-lan, André LaCocque, Stephen E. Lahey, John Tsz Pang Lai, Emiel Lamberts, Armando Lampe, Craig Lampe, Beverly J. Lanzetta, Eve LaPlante, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ariel Bybee Laughton, Leonard Lawlor, Bentley Layton, Robin A. Leaver, Karen Lebacqz, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Marilyn J. Legge, Hervé LeGrand, D. L. LeMahieu, Raymond Lemieux, Bill J. Leonard, Ellen M. Leonard, Outi Leppä, Jean Lesaulnier, Nantawan Boonprasat Lewis, Henrietta Leyser, Alexei Lidov, Bernard Lightman, Paul Chang-Ha Lim, Carter Lindberg, Mark R. Lindsay, James R. Linville, James C. Livingston, Ann Loades, David Loades, Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole, Lo Lung Kwong, Wati Longchar, Eleazar López, David W. Lotz, Andrew Louth, Robin W. Lovin, William Luis, Frank D. Macchia, Diarmaid N. J. MacCulloch, Kirk R. MacGregor, Marjory A. MacLean, Donald MacLeod, Tomas S. Maddela, Inge Mager, Laurenti Magesa, David G. Maillu, Fortunato Mallimaci, Philip Mamalakis, Kä Mana, Ukachukwu Chris Manus, Herbert Robinson Marbury, Reuel Norman Marigza, Jacqueline Mariña, Antti Marjanen, Luiz C. L. Marques, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan'a Mphahlele), Caleb J. D. Maskell, Steve Mason, Thomas Massaro, Fernando Matamoros Ponce, András Máté-Tóth, Odair Pedroso Mateus, Dinis Matsolo, Fumitaka Matsuoka, John D'Arcy May, Yelena Mazour-Matusevich, Theodore Mbazumutima, John S. McClure, Christian McConnell, Lee Martin McDonald, Gary B. McGee, Thomas McGowan, Alister E. McGrath, Richard J. McGregor, John A. McGuckin, Maud Burnett McInerney, Elsie Anne McKee, Mary B. McKinley, James F. McMillan, Ernan McMullin, Kathleen E. McVey, M. Douglas Meeks, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, Ilie Melniciuc-Puica, Everett Mendoza, Raymond A. Mentzer, William W. Menzies, Ina Merdjanova, Franziska Metzger, Constant J. Mews, Marvin Meyer, Carol Meyers, Vasile Mihoc, Gunner Bjerg Mikkelsen, Maria Inêz de Castro Millen, Clyde Lee Miller, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Alexander Mirkovic, Paul Misner, Nozomu Miyahira, R. W. L. Moberly, Gerald Moede, Aloo Osotsi Mojola, Sunanda Mongia, Rebeca Montemayor, James Moore, Roger E. Moore, Craig E. Morrison O.Carm, Jeffry H. Morrison, Keith Morrison, Wilson J. Moses, Tefetso Henry Mothibe, Mokgethi Motlhabi, Fulata Moyo, Henry Mugabe, Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, Peggy Mulambya-Kabonde, Robert Bruce Mullin, Pamela Mullins Reaves, Saskia Murk Jansen, Heleen L. Murre-Van den Berg, Augustine Musopole, Isaac M. T. Mwase, Philomena Mwaura, Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Anne Nasimiyu Wasike, Carmiña Navia Velasco, Thulani Ndlazi, Alexander Negrov, James B. Nelson, David G. Newcombe, Carol Newsom, Helen J. Nicholson, George W. E. Nickelsburg, Tatyana Nikolskaya, Damayanthi M. A. Niles, Bertil Nilsson, Nyambura Njoroge, Fidelis Nkomazana, Mary Beth Norton, Christian Nottmeier, Sonene Nyawo, Anthère Nzabatsinda, Edward T. Oakes, Gerald O'Collins, Daniel O'Connell, David W. Odell-Scott, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Kathleen O'Grady, Oyeronke Olajubu, Thomas O'Loughlin, Dennis T. Olson, J. Steven O'Malley, Cephas N. Omenyo, Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, César Augusto Ornellas Ramos, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, Kenan B. Osborne, Carolyn Osiek, Javier Otaola Montagne, Douglas F. Ottati, Anna May Say Pa, Irina Paert, Jerry G. Pankhurst, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Samuele F. Pardini, Stefano Parenti, Peter Paris, Sung Bae Park, Cristián G. Parker, Raquel Pastor, Joseph Pathrapankal, Daniel Patte, W. Brown Patterson, Clive Pearson, Keith F. Pecklers, Nancy Cardoso Pereira, David Horace Perkins, Pheme Perkins, Edward N. Peters, Rebecca Todd Peters, Bishop Yeznik Petrossian, Raymond Pfister, Peter C. Phan, Isabel Apawo Phiri, William S. F. Pickering, Derrick G. Pitard, William Elvis Plata, Zlatko Plese, John Plummer, James Newton Poling, Ronald Popivchak, Andrew Porter, Ute Possekel, James M. Powell, Enos Das Pradhan, Devadasan Premnath, Jaime Adrían Prieto Valladares, Anne Primavesi, Randall Prior, María Alicia Puente Lutteroth, Eduardo Guzmão Quadros, Albert Rabil, Laurent William Ramambason, Apolonio M. Ranche, Vololona Randriamanantena Andriamitandrina, Lawrence R. Rast, Paul L. Redditt, Adele Reinhartz, Rolf Rendtorff, Pål Repstad, James N. Rhodes, John K. Riches, Joerg Rieger, Sharon H. Ringe, Sandra Rios, Tyler Roberts, David M. Robinson, James M. Robinson, Joanne Maguire Robinson, Richard A. H. Robinson, Roy R. Robson, Jack B. Rogers, Maria Roginska, Sidney Rooy, Rev. Garnett Roper, Maria José Fontelas Rosado-Nunes, Andrew C. Ross, Stefan Rossbach, François Rossier, John D. Roth, John K. Roth, Phillip Rothwell, Richard E. Rubenstein, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Markku Ruotsila, John E. Rybolt, Risto Saarinen, John Saillant, Juan Sanchez, Wagner Lopes Sanchez, Hugo N. Santos, Gerhard Sauter, Gloria L. Schaab, Sandra M. Schneiders, Quentin J. Schultze, Fernando F. Segovia, Turid Karlsen Seim, Carsten Selch Jensen, Alan P. F. Sell, Frank C. Senn, Kent Davis Sensenig, Damían Setton, Bal Krishna Sharma, Carolyn J. Sharp, Thomas Sheehan, N. Gerald Shenk, Christian Sheppard, Charles Sherlock, Tabona Shoko, Walter B. Shurden, Marguerite Shuster, B. Mark Sietsema, Batara Sihombing, Neil Silberman, Clodomiro Siller, Samuel Silva-Gotay, Heikki Silvet, John K. Simmons, Hagith Sivan, James C. Skedros, Abraham Smith, Ashley A. Smith, Ted A. Smith, Daud Soesilo, Pia Søltoft, Choan-Seng (C. S.) Song, Kathryn Spink, Bryan Spinks, Eric O. Springsted, Nicolas Standaert, Brian Stanley, Glen H. Stassen, Karel Steenbrink, Stephen J. Stein, Andrea Sterk, Gregory E. Sterling, Columba Stewart, Jacques Stewart, Robert B. Stewart, Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ken Stone, Anne Stott, Elizabeth Stuart, Monya Stubbs, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, David Kwang-sun Suh, Scott W. Sunquist, Keith Suter, Douglas Sweeney, Charles H. Talbert, Shawqi N. Talia, Elsa Tamez, Joseph B. Tamney, Jonathan Y. Tan, Yak-Hwee Tan, Kathryn Tanner, Feiya Tao, Elizabeth S. Tapia, Aquiline Tarimo, Claire Taylor, Mark Lewis Taylor, Bishop Abba Samuel Wolde Tekestebirhan, Eugene TeSelle, M. Thomas Thangaraj, David R. Thomas, Andrew Thornley, Scott Thumma, Marcelo Timotheo da Costa, George E. “Tink” Tinker, Ola Tjørhom, Karen Jo Torjesen, Iain R. Torrance, Fernando Torres-Londoño, Archbishop Demetrios [Trakatellis], Marit Trelstad, Christine Trevett, Phyllis Trible, Johannes Tromp, Paul Turner, Robert G. Tuttle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Peter Tyler, Anders Tyrberg, Justin Ukpong, Javier Ulloa, Camillus Umoh, Kristi Upson-Saia, Martina Urban, Monica Uribe, Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, Richard Vaggione, Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Valliere, T. J. Van Bavel, Steven Vanderputten, Peter Van der Veer, Huub Van de Sandt, Louis Van Tongeren, Luke A. Veronis, Noel Villalba, Ramón Vinke, Tim Vivian, David Voas, Elena Volkova, Katharina von Kellenbach, Elina Vuola, Timothy Wadkins, Elaine M. Wainwright, Randi Jones Walker, Dewey D. Wallace, Jerry Walls, Michael J. Walsh, Philip Walters, Janet Walton, Jonathan L. Walton, Wang Xiaochao, Patricia A. Ward, David Harrington Watt, Herold D. Weiss, Laurence L. Welborn, Sharon D. Welch, Timothy Wengert, Traci C. West, Merold Westphal, David Wetherell, Barbara Wheeler, Carolinne White, Jean-Paul Wiest, Frans Wijsen, Terry L. Wilder, Felix Wilfred, Rebecca Wilkin, Daniel H. Williams, D. Newell Williams, Michael A. Williams, Vincent L. Wimbush, Gabriele Winkler, Anders Winroth, Lauri Emílio Wirth, James A. Wiseman, Ebba Witt-Brattström, Teofil Wojciechowski, John Wolffe, Kenman L. Wong, Wong Wai Ching, Linda Woodhead, Wendy M. Wright, Rose Wu, Keith E. Yandell, Gale A. Yee, Viktor Yelensky, Yeo Khiok-Khng, Gustav K. K. Yeung, Angela Yiu, Amos Yong, Yong Ting Jin, You Bin, Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Eliana Yunes, Robert Michael Zaller, Valarie H. Ziegler, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Aurora Zlotnik, Zhuo Xinping
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3 - Literature and Survival: Jacob's Room and Mrs Dalloway
- Jane de Gay, Trinity and All Saints' College
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Summary
It is widely accepted that Jacob's Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925) are Woolf's first experimental novels, building on radical short stories such as ‘Kew Gardens’ and ‘The Mark on the Wall’ and on the theories of fiction developed in ‘Modern Novels’. Woolf abandons the rigid chapter structure she criticised in ‘Modern Novels’, adopting in both a more flexible form built on sketches or ‘moments’ of varying length. She eschews a documentary approach to character in Jacob's Room by making the eponymous character an enigma, and in Mrs Dalloway by concentrating on the mental experience of her protagonists, the latter being especially radical for embracing the psychotic consciousness of Septimus Warren Smith. Woolf also wrote both novels with an awareness of the work of her contemporaries, particularly T. S. Eliot, whom she had met in 1919, and James Joyce, whose Ulysses she had read in draft form in 1918 and grudgingly admired.
However, as this chapter will demonstrate, alongside her innovations Woolf maintained a respect for the literary past and remained concerned about tradition and canonicity. The tension is evident within ‘Modern Novels’ itself, for Woolf notes that her ‘quarrel … is not with the classics’ (E, III. 31), levelling her criticism against the popular writers of the time: the previous half-generation of novelists represented by H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy; and although she hails Joyce as the leading figure in a new trend, she none the less compares him unfavourably with Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Laurence Sterne and William Thackeray (E, III. 33–4).
6 - ‘Lives Together’: Literary and Spiritual Autobiographies in The Waves
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Woolf considered The Waves to be the novel which came closest to capturing her own ideas and establishing her own style. When exploring her earliest ideas for the work, she noted a desire to write a book which was ‘made solely & with integrity of one's thoughts’ (D, III. 102), and after finishing it, she noted, ‘I think I am about to embody, at last, the exact shapes my brain holds. What a long toil to reach this beginning – if The Waves is my first work in my own style!’ (D, IV. 53). Although these statements may appear to be declarations of originality or expressions of a Bloomian desire to overcome the anxiety of influence, the reverse is true. Woolf's comments on her style are couched in provisional, exploratory terms (‘I think …’; ‘if The Waves is …’), suggesting a writerly identity which was in process rather than achieved. The novel itself is profoundly polyphonic, for its prose enfolds many earlier texts in a variety of subtle ways: quotations are absorbed very deeply into the fabric of the novel, with very few being offset or placed in quotation marks; there is much paraphrasing of famous texts; and well-known literary moments (like the mysterious laughter in Jane Eyre (W, 207)) are replayed as part of the characters' experiences. In other words, in expressing her thoughts or ‘the shapes [her] brain holds’ (not ‘produces’), Woolf inevitably expressed the works which formed an important part of her mental landscape, for reading was integral to her intellectual life.
Introduction
- Jane de Gay, Trinity and All Saints' College
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Virginia Woolf has long been celebrated as an innovative novelist and a radical thinker who broke with the aesthetics of earlier generations and challenged their values; some critics have even suggested that she anticipated ideas and approaches which emerged long after her time. However, it is less widely acknowledged that Woolf also looked backwards; that she was immersed in the literary past and her intellectual heritage as a reader and critic; and that this had an impact on her fiction. Although Beth Carole Rosenberg has drawn attention to Woolf's dialogue with other writers in her essays and fiction, and Sally Greene's edited collection, Virginia Woolf: Reading the Renaissance, has demonstrated that the strength of Woolf's interest in the Renaissance can be seen in both her scholarship and her fiction, many scholars are none the less reluctant to see the presence of the literary past in the novels. So, for example, although Elena Gualtieri and Juliet Dusinberre have drawn attention to Woolf's intimacy with the literary past in her essays, both resist applying these insights to her novels: Gualtieri makes a distinction between the essay, which ‘remained for her attached to the paternal figure and therefore became the arena where the relationship between tradition and modernity was explored’, and the novel, which ‘represented the possibility of experimenting with new forms and shapes’; and Dusinberre argues that Woolf ‘used the past for a purpose, as an empowering model for herself as woman writer, and particularly as a writer not of fiction but of criticism and literary history’.
4 - To the Lighthouse and the Ghost of Leslie Stephen
- Jane de Gay, Trinity and All Saints' College
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Father's birthday. He would have been … 96, yes, today; & could have been 96, like other people one has known; but mercifully was not. His life would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books; – inconceivable. I used to think of him & mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse, laid them in my mind. And now he comes back sometimes, but differently. (I believe this to be true – that I was obsessed by them both, unhealthily; & writing of them was a necessary act.) He comes back now more as a contemporary. I must read him some day. I wonder if I can feel again, I hear his voice, I know this by heart? (D, III. 208)
Woolf wrote these words in her diary entry for 28 November 1928, almost two years after To the Lighthouse was completed. She records that, retrospectively, she regarded the novel as a turning-point in her relationship with both her parents: by writing this heavily autobiographical novel and by translating her parents into the fictional characters of Mr and Mrs Ramsay, Woolf readjusted her relationship with her past. It is tempting to use this diary entry, as Fogel does, to read To the Lighthouse as a process by which Woolf overcame parental influences and took control of her own writing. However, the latter part of the passage suggests a different dynamic, for it articulates a process of loss and recovery: although Leslie Stephen's death had left Woolf free to write, her sense of freedom was compromised by an ‘unhealthy obsession’, a form of longing for him. The process of writing To the Lighthouse helped Woolf address this loss by enabling her to know her father (though not her mother) in a new way: as a writer.
Frontmatter
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Virginia Woolf's Novels and the Literary Past
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This is the first book to explore Virginia Woolfs preoccupation with the literary past and its profound impact on the content and structure of her novels.
5 - Rewriting Literary History in Orlando
- Jane de Gay, Trinity and All Saints' College
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Orlando is often taken on Woolf's own estimation as ‘an escapade’ (D, III. 131) and viewed as a lighthearted comic piece. However, when read in the context of Woolf's engagement with the literary past, it can be seen to serve the serious purpose of critiquing the assumptions of patriarchal literary history and developing feminist perspectives to replace them. Although Woolf's use of parody in Orlando is undoubtedly comic, it is also layered and strategic. On the one hand, her parody of academic conceptions is satirical: she mocks conventional approaches to literary history (as well as biography and history) by mimicking them in the voice of the narrator and the mock scholarly apparatus of preface, footnotes and index, all of which are shown to be inadequate frameworks for addressing the complex subject-matter of a character who lives for 350 years and changes sexes part-way through. She also attacks the literary-critical establishment through the heavily satirised figure of Nick Greene who sets himself up as an arbiter of taste, but is merely a self-publicist seeking financial gain (as a Renaissance and Restoration hack) and society's esteem (as a Victorian knighted professor). On the other hand, Woolf's parodies of English literary styles and her allusions to a wide range of texts and authors from the Renaissance to the present are more subtle and complex.
Conclusion
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We can now see that Woolf's novels were informed deeply by her sometimes vexed, sometimes positive conversations with past writers. As the analyses of her creative processes in the preceding chapters reveal, her reading and writing practices were closely interfused: quite simply, she needed to read in order to write, and almost invariably she preferred to read past writers. Sometimes she needed to read for intellectual stimulation: it is significant that she began to draft The Voyage Out after six years of intensive reading, but even in the 1930s, reading poetry helped release her from creative deadlock whilst formulating The Waves. Woolf also used past writings to help her make sense of the world and its problems – not least war and patriarchy – and as a consequence these works informed the thematic content of her novels.
Reading earlier literature also helped Woolf explore her own preoccupations and sensibilities, such as when she read Sterne in 1926 while considering the future of the novel in general and of her own writing in particular, or when she saw in Coleridge's agonies her own sense of being overwhelmed by experience. These empathetic readings in turn helped her articulate traumatic experiences of her own, such as when she used the classical image of birds singing in Greek in describing her breakdown of 1904, or when she drew on Romantic models to help develop her ‘moments of being’. Reading was so central to Woolf's understanding of the world that re-reading texts also became a form of self-discovery, a revisiting of self and past. This is most evident in The Waves, where in an intense reflexive exploration of her own process, she revisited works which had inspired her: for example, while writing the second typescript she re-read and quoted from Dante who had stimulated her earliest sketches for the novel.
Select Bibliography
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Abbreviations
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Acknowledgements
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7 - Bringing the Literary Past to Life in Between the Acts
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Virginia Woolf's engagement with the literary past was at its most urgent and intense in Between the Acts. Written against the backdrop of the escalation of the Fascist threat and the outbreak of the Second World War, a period Woolf feared might signal ‘the complete ruin not only of civilization in Europe, but of our last lap’ (D, V. 162), it betrays a concern to preserve a threatened culture in writing. Set in June 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war, the novel encapsulates a form of English society which was about to disappear. Literature is given a prominent place within this account, both in Miss La Trobe's pageant, which parodies several phases of English literary history and is peppered with allusions, and in the collection of glancing allusions, quotations and misquotations which, as Gillian Beer has noted, are ‘combed through’ the novel as a whole. However, the novel also reflects an awareness of the difficulties and dangers both in looking back to the literary past and in writing new work at such a crucial point in world history. This awareness was prominent in Woolf's non-fiction at the time and forms a significant part of the dynamic of Between the Acts.
Woolf's ambivalence about the value and relevance of literature at a time of danger is central to her argument in Three Guineas about whether it is possible to prevent war by protecting culture and intellectual liberty.