Explores the way Woolf used essay-writing techniques to develop her conception of the modern novel. The focus of this study is on Virginia Woolf's vast output of essays and their relation to her fiction. Randi Saloman shows that it was by employing tools and methods drawn from the essay genre - such as fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness and dialogic engagement with the reader - that Woolf managed to leave behind the realism of the 19th-century novel. Saloman draws on key theorists of the essay such as T.W. Adorno and Georg Lukács, as well as on more recent scholars of 'essayism' (a term devised by Robert Musil to describe the hypothetical quality of the essay mode). She shows that the essay, as genre and mode, shaped Woolf's writing, and modern fiction more generally, in ways that have not yet been articulated. Key Features:* In-depth consideration of Virginia Woolf's shorter essays* Revisionary accounts of /A Room of One's Own/ (1929) and /Three Guineas/ (1938)* New readings of Woolf's major and less well-known novels, including /The Pargiters/, her failed 'essay-novel'* Repositions the essay as a major modernist genre, responsible in large part for the creation of the modern (and especially the 'modernist') novelKeywords: Virginia Woolf, Modernism, The Essay, Fiction, Essayism, The Novel, Genre
Includes bibliographical references (pages 198-216) and index
In the first comprehensive study of Virginia Woolf's Common Reader, Katerina Koutsantoni draws on theorists from the fields of sociology, sociolinguistics, philosophy, and literary criticism to investigate the thematic pattern underpinning these books with respect to the persona of the 'common reader'. As she explores and challenges the meaning of impersonality in Woolf's Common Reader, Koutsantoni shows how related issues, including authority, reader-response, intersubjectivity, and dialogism, offer useful perspectives from which to examine Woolf's work
Cover; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Conversing with the Reader; 1 Why go on with these essays?; 2 We must remain readers; 3 I do not love to be led by the nose ... by authority; 4 To forget one's own sharp absurd little personality ... & practise anonymity; 5 In all writing, it's the person's own edge that counts; 6 Society is a nest of glass boxes one separate from another; Conclusion: With this odd mix up of public & private I left off; Bibliography; Index
