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Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf
Added by: huelgas | Karma: 1208.98 | Fiction literature | 25 January 2009
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In the early twentieth century the Modernist novel tested literary conventions and expectations, challenging representations of reality, consciousness and identity. These novels were not simply creative masterpieces, however, but also crucial articulations of revolutionary developments in critical thought. Tracing the developing modernist aesthetic in the thought and writings of James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf, Deborah Parsons considers the cultural, social and personal influences upon the three writers.
In this debut book, Glenny (Ph.D., English literature), a former anorexic, attributes the "omnipresence" of food in the writing of Virginia Woolf to her "premature weaning" (at ten weeks), the early death of her mother, and, most significantly, sexual abuse by her half-brother. While this densely written study breaks new ground in Woolf scholarship, Glenny goes too far by becoming an apologist for anorexia. Instead of simply showing how important food was as a metaphor for Woolf, Glenny makes disturbing comments such as "anorexia can, at its most positive, function as a bell-jar in which personal and political change is fermented."
Politics and Aesthetics in The Diary of Virginia Woolf 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. 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.
This book explores the relationship between aesthetic productivity and artists' degree of involvement in social and sexual life as depicted in Virginia Woolf's novels. Ann Ronchetti locates the sources of Woolf's lifelong preoccupation with the artist's relationship to society in her family heritage, her exposure to Walter Pater and the aesthetic movement, and the philosophical and aesthetic interests of the Bloomsbury group.
