Woolf Outside Reading List
(See schedule and sign-up list for
dates when these are due. See
guidelines
for expectations and requirements.
All of these are available
from me.)
WOOLF ESSAYS
Woolf’s essays are extremely valuable for
understanding her work and her place in modern literature.
I have scanned selected essays and will provide copies for everyone to
read, although I am making this optional. You may choose to give your
outside reading report on one of these essays, or choose instead from the
Criticism list of articles about Woolf novels.
§
“Modern Fiction”
from Common Reader
(1921) – Woolf’s most quoted essay, “a manifesto of literary modernism” (Hussey
162); sets up the “Georgians” (her own generation of novelists) vs. the
“Edwardians” (H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy) regarding the
definition of “life” and how the novel records it: “Life is not a series of gig
lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent
envelope surrounding us from beginning to end” (Woolf CE2 106).
- “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” from New York
Evening Post (Nov 17, 1923) - much reprinted and considered “one of the
most influential manifestos of literary modernism” (Hussey 168); revised as
“Character in Fiction,” Criterion July 1924)
- “Professions for Women” from Death of the Moth
(1942) - see Hussey for publishing history of this much reprinted essay in
which Woolf describes killing the “Angel in the House.”
§
“Thoughts on
Peace in an Air Raid” from New Republic
(1940), rpt. Collected Essays
(4 vols, 1966-67)
– a gender analysis of
war and what women can do to stop war.
CRITICISM
Everyone reads one article from this list and
reports on it to the class. I have extra copies of these that you may borrow
(but I want them back). You may request permission to report on an article not
on this list.
You must choose an outside reading about a book OUTSIDE
your book group.
Mrs. Dalloway
- Abel, Elizabeth. "Narrative Structure(s) and Female
Development: The Case of Mrs. Dalloway." The Voyage In: Fictions of Female
Development. Ed. Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland.
Hanover, NH: U P of New England, 1983. 161-85.
- Mezei, Kathy. "Who is Speaking Here? Free Indirect
Discourse, Gender, and Authority in Emma, Howards End, and Mrs.
Dalloway." Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist Narratology & British Women
Writers. Ed. Kathy Mezei. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996.
66-92.
- Miller, J. Hillis. "Mrs. Dalloway: Repetition as the
Raising of the Dead." Modern Critical Views: Virginia Woolf. Ed.
Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 169-190. Reprinted from
Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1982.
- Ruotolo, Lucio. "Mrs. Dalloway: The Unguarded Moment."
Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity. Ed. Ralph Freedman and
Maria DiBattista. Berkeley: U of California P, 1980. 141-160.
To the Lighthouse
- Auerbach, Erich. "The Brown Stocking." Mimesis.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton U P , 1946. 16-34. Rpt. Bloom (and elsewhere; this
is probably the most often reprinted article about TTL).
- Levy, Eric. "Woolf’s
Metaphysics of Tragic Vision in To the Lighthouse." Philological Quarterly
75:1(1996): 109-32.
- Lilienfeld, Jane. "’The Deceptiveness of Beauty’:
Mother Love and Mother Hate in To the Lighthouse." Twentieth
Century Literature 23 (1977):345-373.
- Nussbaum, Martha C. “The Window: Knowledge of Other
Minds in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.” New Literary History
26:4(1995):731 53.
Orlando
- Caughie, Pamela L. "Virginia Woolf's Double
Discourse." Discontented Discourses: Feminism/ Textual Intervention/
Psychoanalysis. Ed. Marleen S. Barr and Richard Feldstein. Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 1989. 41-53. Rpt. McNees, vol. 2.
- Hankins, Leslie Kathleen. “Orlando: ‘A Precipice
Marked V’: Between ‘A Miracle of Discovery’ and ‘Lovemaking Unbelievable,
Indiscretions Incredible.’” Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. Ed.
Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. New York: New York UP, 1997. 180-202.
- Moore, Madeline. "Orlando: An Imaginative Answer."
The Short Season Between Two Silences: The Mystical and The Political
in the Novels of Virginia Woolf. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984.
93-115. Rpt. McNees, vol. 2.
Other
- London, Bette.
“Guerrilla in Petticoats or Sans-Culotte? Virginia Woolf and the Future of
Feminist Criticism.” Diacritics 21 (1991):11-29.
Back to Virginia Woolf Seminar Home Page