Unveiling the Contemporary in Virginia Woolf

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2021.e74632

Abstract

This article aims to discuss Virginia Woolf’s critical appraisal of the contemporariness of her contemporaries’ production, focusing on her 1923 essay “How It Strikes a Contemporary”. To that end, it contextualizes the publication of The Common Reader – First Series (1925) so as to problematize its conversational quality as a philosophical principle inherent to Woolf’s oeuvre (Pinho 2020). A comparison is also drawn between Woolf’s “How It Strikes a Contemporary” and Giorgio Agamben’s “What Is the Contemporary?” (2009) in order to shed light on the intersections between contemporary philosophy and the philosophical questions we find in Woolf’s writing. 

Author Biography

Patricia Fagundes, Universidade Federal do Acre

Doutora em Letras na área de Literatura Comparada (2019) pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Possui mestrado em Letras na área de Poética (2012) e graduação em Letras: Português/Inglês (2009) pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Trabalha como professora adjunta no curso de Letras - Língua Inglesa e Respectivas Literaturas da Universidade Federal do Acre. Atualmente coordena o projeto de pesquisa "Por uma filosofia woolfiana: repercussões de The Waves na contemporaneidade". Tem experiência na área de Letras, com ênfase em Literaturas de Língua Inglesa e Ensino de Língua Inglesa.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. “What is the Contemporary?” What Is an Apparatus? and Other

Essays. Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 39-54.

Agamben, Giorgio. “Philosophical Archaeology.” The Signature of All Things: on

Method. Zane Books, 2009, pp. 9-34

Agamben, Giorgio. “The Logic of Sovereignty.” Homo Sacer – Sovereign Power and

Bare Life, Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 15-44.

Braidotti, Rosi. “Intensive Genre and the Demise of Gender”. Nomadic Theory, The

Portable Rosi Braidotti, Columbia University Press, 2011, pp. 150-169.

Briggs, Julia. “A Woman Connects”. An Inner Life, Harcourt, 2005, pp. 109-129.

Fry, Roger. Vision and Design. Dover Publications, 2011.

Goldman, Jane. Modernism, 1910-1945, Image to Apocalypse. Palgrave MacMillan,

Hite, Molly. Woolf ’s Ambiguities: Tonal Modernism, Narrative Strategy, Feminist

Precursors. Cornell University Press, 2017.

Lee, Hermione. “Virginia Woolf ’s Essays.” The Cambridge Companion to Virginia

Woolf, edited by Susan Sellers, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 89-106.

McNeillie, Andrew. “Introduction.” The Common Reader – Volume I, written by

Virginia Woolf, Vintage, 2003, pp. vii-xii.

Pinho, Davi. “A conversa como um ‘método’ filosófico em Virginia Woolf.” Conversas

com Virginia Woolf, edited by Davi Pinho, Maria Oliveira and Nícea Nogueira,

Ape’ku, 2020, pp. 11-31.

Pinho, Davi. Imagens do feminino na obra e na vida de Virginia Woolf. Appris, 2015.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Wordsworth Classics, 2012.

Woolf, Virginia. “A Sketch of the Past.” Moments of Being, Harcourt Inc, 1985, pp.

-159.

Woolf, Virginia. “Character in Fiction.” Selected Essays, Oxford University Press,

, pp. 37-54.

Woolf, Virginia. “Craftsmanship.” Selected Essays, Oxford Classics, 2009, pp. 85-91.

Woolf, Virginia. “How it Strikes a Contemporary”. Selected Essays, Oxford Classics,

, pp. 23-31.

Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Olivier Bell, Penguin

Books, 1979-1985.

Woolf, Virginia. “The Modern Essay”. Selected Essays, Oxford Classics, 2009, pp. 13-

Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Oxford Classics, 2015.

Downloads

Published

2021-01-28

Issue

Vol. 74 No. 1 (2021): Literature

Section

Literary contexts: re-readings and intertexts

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Patricia Fagundes

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.