Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-garde: War, Civilization, Modernity

Christine Froula

Published by Columbia University Press 2006

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-garde

War, Civilization, Modernity

Christine Froula

In the series Gender and Culture Series

https://doi.org/10.7312/frou13444

Overview
Contents

About this book

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde traces Woolf's art and thought in dialogue with Bloomsbury, Britain's modern heir to the unfinished Enlightenment project of human rights, democratic self-governance, and world peace. For Bloomsbury the 1914 "civil war" exposed barbarity within European civilization-belligerent nationalism, racialized economic imperialism, oppressive class and sex/gender systems-the Versailles Peace fostered totalitarianism and led to a second world war. An avant-garde in the struggle against the violence within, Bloomsbury contributed richly to interwar debates as liberal democracy, socialism, fascism, and communism contended over Europe's future.From her first novel, The Voyage Out, to her last, Between the Acts, Woolf honed her public voice alongside Bloomsbury contemporaries John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield and others. An ambitious analysis of Woolf's major writings in light of the historical conditions to which they respond, this volume illuminates the convergence of aesthetics and politics in post-Enlightenment thought and opens a new chapter in Woolf studies.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde traces the dynamic emergence of Woolf's art and thought against Bloomsbury's public thinking about Europe's future in a period marked by two world wars and rising threats of totalitarianism. Educated informally in her father's library and in Bloomsbury's London extension of Cambridge, Virginia Woolf came of age in the prewar decades, when progressive political and social movements gave hope that Europe "might really be on the brink of becoming civilized," as Leonard Woolf put it. For pacifist Bloomsbury, heir to Europe's unfinished Enlightenment project of human rights, democratic self-governance, and world peace—and, in E. M. Forster's words, "the only genuine movement in English civilization"— the 1914 "civil war" exposed barbarities within Europe: belligerent nationalisms, rapacious racialized economic imperialism, oppressive class and sex/gender systems, a tragic and unnecessary war that mobilized sixty-five million and left thirty-seven million casualties. An avant-garde in the twentieth-century struggle against the violence within European civilization, Bloomsbury and Woolf contributed richly to interwar debates on Europe's future at a moment when democracy's triumph over fascism and communism was by no means assured.

Woolf honed her public voice in dialogue with contemporaries in and beyond Bloomsbury— John Maynard Keynes and Roger Fry to Sigmund Freud (published by the Woolfs'Hogarth Press), Bertrand Russell, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and many others—and her works embody and illuminate the convergence of aesthetics and politics in post-Enlightenment thought. An ambitious history of her writings in relation to important currents in British intellectual life in the first half of the twentieth century, this book explores Virginia Woolf's narrative journey from her first novel, The Voyage Out, through her last, Between the Acts.

Author / Editor information

Christine Froula is professor of English, comparative literature, and gender studies at Northwestern University and a past president of the International Virginia Woolf Society. Her extensive publications include Modernism's Body: Sex, Culture, and Joyce.

Reviews

Christine Reynier:
We can be grateful to Christine Froula for this most stimulating study which significantly broadens the scope of Woolf's work.

Jessica Berman:
What a pleasure to read Froula's smart, wide-ranging, and often exquisite book.

Jane Garrity:
Froula's fascinating new book... makes a timely contribution to modernist scholarship.

Janfarie Skinner:
This major new book is a significant and substantial addition to [Froula's] contribution to Woolf studies.

Julia Keller:
Froula's book brims with fresh historical and political insights... [Her] book is crucial.

Helen Southworth:
Provocative... intensely optimistic... Impressive body of work on Woolf and modernism... Provides a fresh and challenging set of readings.

Vera Neverow:
Christine Froula's Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde is a timely and valuable contribution to Woolf studies emphasizing Woolf's relation to the political, aesthetic, and feminine milieu of her own era and beyond.

Jim Stewart:
Froula pursues her task passionately in a book which is energetic and likeable.

In this brilliant, indeed indispensable, study, Froula (Northwestern Univ.) places Woolf's major works in the context of Bloomsbury as a modernist movement...Essential.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
1. Civilization and “my civilisation” Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Rachel’s Great War Civilization, Sacrifice, and the Enlightenment of Women in Melymbrosia and The Voyage Out Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
3. The Death of Jacob Flanders Greek Illusion and Modern War in Jacob’s Room Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
4. Mrs. Dalloway’s Postwar Elegy Women, War, and the Art of Mourning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
5. Picture the World The Quest for the Thing Itself in To the Lighthouse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
6. A Fin in a Waste of Waters Women, Genius, Freedom in Orlando, A Room of One’s Own, and The Waves Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
7. The Sexual Life of Women Experimental Genres, Experimental Publics from The Pargiters to The Years Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
8. St. Virginia’s Epistle to an English Gentleman Sex, Violence, and the Public Sphere in Three Guineas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
9. The Play in the Sky of the Mind Between the Acts of Civilization’s Masterplot Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 432

eBook

Published: September 22, 2006
ISBN: 9780231508780