The Norton Reader has introduced millions of writing students to the essay as a genre. First publ... more The Norton Reader has introduced millions of writing students to the essay as a genre. First published in 1965, it is still the best-selling thematic reader-and the only thematic reader that also supports a genre-based approach. The Thirteenth Edition introduces a new generation of editors, almost 50 new essays, and a unique new website that allows readers to sort and search for readings by theme, genre, mode, keyword, and more.
Like most social historians of her day, Virginia Woolf traced the emergence of literature as a si... more Like most social historians of her day, Virginia Woolf traced the emergence of literature as a significant cultural force in England to sometime between the ages of Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) and Shakespeare (1564–1616). For her, print culture became dominant only when men and women outside the court had access to enough books to make reading for pleasure an engrossing pastime. In her essay “The Pastons and Chaucer” (1925), she imagines the impact of literacy on the Pastons, a well-to-do Norfolk family, emphasizing how a love of reading led to the neglect of family business.1 But it is in “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” (also 1925) that she documents the transformation of the English language from the humble, pragmatic language of ordinary people into the language of Shakespeare. Woolf’s originality lies in her claim that the agent of that transformation was Hakluyt’s Trafficks and Discoveries a huge collection of the narratives of voyages, mostly English, mostly by sea. Woolf locates the cultural memory of English literature in Hakluyt’s volumes, whose lively miscellany contrasts with later, patriarchally sanctioned attempts to bring memory into order. My purpose here is not to assess the validity of Woolf’s claims, but to trace their origins in her reading and, more importantly, their effect on her feminist understanding of memory and imagination, both individual and cultural.
In the feminist pamphlet Three Guineas (1938), Woolf linked gender and citizenship, writing, “As ... more In the feminist pamphlet Three Guineas (1938), Woolf linked gender and citizenship, writing, “As a woman, I have no country” (3G, 109). Today, we hear in that phrase not only a refusal of nationalism-as-patriotism, but also a gesture toward a new global citizenship, which is differently constituted to welcome women and is imagined in opposition to mainline nationalism. For some time critics have made this into Woolf’s most important statement on nationalism.1 They have emphasized the link Woolf makes between the resistance of antifascist women and Antigone’s refusal to obey Creon. But this progressive, antipatriarchal sense of the legacy of Greek literature was not always Woolf’s. Early in her career, she acceded to the bourgeois habit of using her knowledge of Greek as cultural capital. Aware that few women knew Greek, she willingly distances herself from working women in order to forge an alliance with educated men, a gesture she explicitly repudiates in Three Guineas. At the same time, her female tutors introduced her to a counterhistory of Greek heroines while providing a living model of how the discipline of Greek can be open to all. To explore how Woolf went from this bifurcated but otherwise conventional bourgeois Victorian idea of the classics to the antinational vision of Antigone in Three Guineas, this chapter takes a close look at major texts from the mid-1920s: Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and the essay “On Not Knowing Greek” from The Common Reader (1925).
From her girlhood in her father’s library to the end of her life, Virginia Woolf read widely and ... more From her girlhood in her father’s library to the end of her life, Virginia Woolf read widely and with passion. She was also an unusually subtle feminist thinker. These, for me, are the two most important facts about her. This book investigates the relation between these two facts—her reading and her feminism—arguing that her revisionist reading constitutes the fundamental shaping force of her feminism. That Woolf was a great reader needs little qualification; she is one of the best-read writers in the history of English literature. The publication of annotated editions of her novels, of her letters, diaries, and reading notebooks, of studies cataloguing her allusions, and the ongoing project of publishing a scholarly edition of her works have all made it possible to trace the appearance of the history of literature in her work.1 My other central focus, on Woolf’s feminist thought, does need further explanation in spite of the continuing stature of A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that the feminist Woolf emerged as central to critics. The work of American feminists, Carolyn Heilbrun and Jane Marcus prominent among them, challenged the stereotype of Woolf as a delicate aesthete. At the same time, the publication of Woolf’s complete letters and diaries made the details of her life, including her many feminist alliances and activities, available to all.
In A Room of One’s Own, the narrator muses on the contents of a London newspaper: I began idly re... more In A Room of One’s Own, the narrator muses on the contents of a London newspaper: I began idly reading the headlines. A ribbon of very large letters ran across the page. Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr. Justice commented in the Divorce Courts upon the Shamelessness of Women. Sprinkled about the paper were other pieces of news. A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air. The weather was going to be foggy. The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. (ARO, 33) In reading idly, Woolf’s persona gleans news that has little to do with any single event. She realizes instead with shock that the front page consists of an overwhelming display of masculine bias. Taken individually, each story may present a reasonable claim to be news on a given day, although it is unlikely that a feminist newspaper from the 1920s would lead with cricket scores, the referent, according to newspapers from the time, for “the big score in South Africa.”
Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, 2007
Page 173. Modernism and Tradition ANNE E. FERNALD Fordham University The first modernists asked u... more Page 173. Modernism and Tradition ANNE E. FERNALD Fordham University The first modernists asked us to believe in a break with the past, to believe that they were writ-ing in a way that was wholly new. Yet early admirers ...
studies, and the wider patterns of collaboration within modernism elucidated by Wayne Koestenbaum... more studies, and the wider patterns of collaboration within modernism elucidated by Wayne Koestenbaum and Holly Laird, among others. If, for instance, male alliances are often imperiled within the modernist text, the collaborative and fruitful pairings of Eliot and Pound, and Conrad and Ford themselves, suggest a critical disjunction between modernism's formal and thematic preoccupations and the politics of its production. As Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War shows us, for all their fragility and impoverishment, the manifold affiliations that mark its literary landscape remain central to our understanding of modernism's production, reception, and sense of itself.
... Alick Isaacs doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-014 ... He bor-rows highly generalized and compacted i... more ... Alick Isaacs doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-014 ... He bor-rows highly generalized and compacted ideas from biology (Lewontin, Gould), sociology (Elias, Weber, Latour), linguistics (Deacon, Bickerton), psychology Page 11. C o m m o n K n o W L E D g E ...
The Norton Reader has introduced millions of writing students to the essay as a genre. First publ... more The Norton Reader has introduced millions of writing students to the essay as a genre. First published in 1965, it is still the best-selling thematic reader-and the only thematic reader that also supports a genre-based approach. The Thirteenth Edition introduces a new generation of editors, almost 50 new essays, and a unique new website that allows readers to sort and search for readings by theme, genre, mode, keyword, and more.
Like most social historians of her day, Virginia Woolf traced the emergence of literature as a si... more Like most social historians of her day, Virginia Woolf traced the emergence of literature as a significant cultural force in England to sometime between the ages of Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) and Shakespeare (1564–1616). For her, print culture became dominant only when men and women outside the court had access to enough books to make reading for pleasure an engrossing pastime. In her essay “The Pastons and Chaucer” (1925), she imagines the impact of literacy on the Pastons, a well-to-do Norfolk family, emphasizing how a love of reading led to the neglect of family business.1 But it is in “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” (also 1925) that she documents the transformation of the English language from the humble, pragmatic language of ordinary people into the language of Shakespeare. Woolf’s originality lies in her claim that the agent of that transformation was Hakluyt’s Trafficks and Discoveries a huge collection of the narratives of voyages, mostly English, mostly by sea. Woolf locates the cultural memory of English literature in Hakluyt’s volumes, whose lively miscellany contrasts with later, patriarchally sanctioned attempts to bring memory into order. My purpose here is not to assess the validity of Woolf’s claims, but to trace their origins in her reading and, more importantly, their effect on her feminist understanding of memory and imagination, both individual and cultural.
In the feminist pamphlet Three Guineas (1938), Woolf linked gender and citizenship, writing, “As ... more In the feminist pamphlet Three Guineas (1938), Woolf linked gender and citizenship, writing, “As a woman, I have no country” (3G, 109). Today, we hear in that phrase not only a refusal of nationalism-as-patriotism, but also a gesture toward a new global citizenship, which is differently constituted to welcome women and is imagined in opposition to mainline nationalism. For some time critics have made this into Woolf’s most important statement on nationalism.1 They have emphasized the link Woolf makes between the resistance of antifascist women and Antigone’s refusal to obey Creon. But this progressive, antipatriarchal sense of the legacy of Greek literature was not always Woolf’s. Early in her career, she acceded to the bourgeois habit of using her knowledge of Greek as cultural capital. Aware that few women knew Greek, she willingly distances herself from working women in order to forge an alliance with educated men, a gesture she explicitly repudiates in Three Guineas. At the same time, her female tutors introduced her to a counterhistory of Greek heroines while providing a living model of how the discipline of Greek can be open to all. To explore how Woolf went from this bifurcated but otherwise conventional bourgeois Victorian idea of the classics to the antinational vision of Antigone in Three Guineas, this chapter takes a close look at major texts from the mid-1920s: Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and the essay “On Not Knowing Greek” from The Common Reader (1925).
From her girlhood in her father’s library to the end of her life, Virginia Woolf read widely and ... more From her girlhood in her father’s library to the end of her life, Virginia Woolf read widely and with passion. She was also an unusually subtle feminist thinker. These, for me, are the two most important facts about her. This book investigates the relation between these two facts—her reading and her feminism—arguing that her revisionist reading constitutes the fundamental shaping force of her feminism. That Woolf was a great reader needs little qualification; she is one of the best-read writers in the history of English literature. The publication of annotated editions of her novels, of her letters, diaries, and reading notebooks, of studies cataloguing her allusions, and the ongoing project of publishing a scholarly edition of her works have all made it possible to trace the appearance of the history of literature in her work.1 My other central focus, on Woolf’s feminist thought, does need further explanation in spite of the continuing stature of A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that the feminist Woolf emerged as central to critics. The work of American feminists, Carolyn Heilbrun and Jane Marcus prominent among them, challenged the stereotype of Woolf as a delicate aesthete. At the same time, the publication of Woolf’s complete letters and diaries made the details of her life, including her many feminist alliances and activities, available to all.
In A Room of One’s Own, the narrator muses on the contents of a London newspaper: I began idly re... more In A Room of One’s Own, the narrator muses on the contents of a London newspaper: I began idly reading the headlines. A ribbon of very large letters ran across the page. Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr. Justice commented in the Divorce Courts upon the Shamelessness of Women. Sprinkled about the paper were other pieces of news. A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air. The weather was going to be foggy. The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. (ARO, 33) In reading idly, Woolf’s persona gleans news that has little to do with any single event. She realizes instead with shock that the front page consists of an overwhelming display of masculine bias. Taken individually, each story may present a reasonable claim to be news on a given day, although it is unlikely that a feminist newspaper from the 1920s would lead with cricket scores, the referent, according to newspapers from the time, for “the big score in South Africa.”
Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, 2007
Page 173. Modernism and Tradition ANNE E. FERNALD Fordham University The first modernists asked u... more Page 173. Modernism and Tradition ANNE E. FERNALD Fordham University The first modernists asked us to believe in a break with the past, to believe that they were writ-ing in a way that was wholly new. Yet early admirers ...
studies, and the wider patterns of collaboration within modernism elucidated by Wayne Koestenbaum... more studies, and the wider patterns of collaboration within modernism elucidated by Wayne Koestenbaum and Holly Laird, among others. If, for instance, male alliances are often imperiled within the modernist text, the collaborative and fruitful pairings of Eliot and Pound, and Conrad and Ford themselves, suggest a critical disjunction between modernism's formal and thematic preoccupations and the politics of its production. As Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War shows us, for all their fragility and impoverishment, the manifold affiliations that mark its literary landscape remain central to our understanding of modernism's production, reception, and sense of itself.
... Alick Isaacs doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-014 ... He bor-rows highly generalized and compacted i... more ... Alick Isaacs doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-014 ... He bor-rows highly generalized and compacted ideas from biology (Lewontin, Gould), sociology (Elias, Weber, Latour), linguistics (Deacon, Bickerton), psychology Page 11. C o m m o n K n o W L E D g E ...
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