This course studies both Woolf’s
social critique and her aesthetic methods. Quentin Bell mistakenly believed, in
a typical assessment, that Woolf “belonged, inescapably, to the Victorian world
of Empire, Class and Privilege. Her gift was for the pursuit of shadows, for
the ghostly whispers of the mind and for Pythian incomprehensibility.” Actually,
the Pythian oracle told Oedipus as plain as day that he would kill his father
and sleep with his mother. If the Pythia was “incomprehensible,” she became so
only because her listeners were unprepared to hear her. Similarly, Woolf’s
radical rejection of capitalism, empire, war-making, and the gender
expectations of her time were literally unthinkable to many of her readers. As
a consequence, many of her works–and her deadpan British humor–were for a
long time misunderstood.
We will read THREE GUINEAS, MRS. DALLOWAY, ORLANDO,
JACOB’S ROOM, THE WAVES, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and FRESHWATER. Students will write
five short papers (2-3 pages) and one research paper (7-10 pages), plus midterm
and final. Class participation
counts. Books will be available from Revolution Books.