English 190

Book List

Woolf, Virgiinia: Between the Acts; Woolf, Virginia: A Room of One's Own; Woolf, Virginia: Jacob's Room; Woolf, Virginia: Moments of Being; Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway; Woolf, Virginia: Orlando; Woolf, Virginia: The Waves; Woolf, Virginia: The Years; Woolf, Virginia: Three Guineas; Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse;

Recommended: Bell, Quentin: Virginia Woolf; Lee, Hermione: Virginia Woolf

Other Readings and Media

An electronic reader of Woolf's most important essays and short fiction, as well as key critical essays about her fiction, will be available on b-space. A range of secondary materials will also be placed on reserve at Moffitt.

Description

This course will examine the evolution of Woolf’s career across the nearly three decades that define the arc of British modernism. This co-incidence will allow us to theorize the shape of a career and of a literary movement, and to re-read that movement through a literary oeuvre that has been cherry picked to illustrate a particular turn within it.  As we map the trajectory from Woolf’s apprenticeship works in the teens through the experimental narratives of the twenties to the politically pressured projects of the late thirties, we will explore the textual strategies through which these turns were achieved and the cultural crosscurrents in which they were embedded. We will read Woolf’s critical essays to situate her narrative practice within her commentary on it (as well as within narrative theory generally); we will take advantage of the recently published holograph manuscripts to read published texts in the context of their revisions; we will scrutinize the proliferation of Woolf biographies to interrogate the assumptions and functions of that genre; and we will put pressure on Woolf’s appropriation and revision by various critical schools and contemporary writers. There will be two written assignments: a short five-page paper to jumpstart the research process and a fifteen-page critical paper at the conclusion of the course.

Please read the paragraph on page 2 of the instructions area of this Announcement of Classes for more details about enrolling in or wait-listing for this course.