Virginia Woolf’s Mythic Method: Classical Memories/Modern Identities
Autor Amy C. Smithen Limba Engleză Paperback – sep 2025
In Virginia Woolf’s Mythic Method, Amy C. Smith reinvigorates scholarly analysis of myth in Virginia Woolf’s fiction by examining how Woolf engaged social and political issues in her work. Through close readings of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Between the Acts, Smith argues that Woolf develops a paratactic method of alluding to Greek myth that is shaped by the style of archaic oral literature and her intersectional feminist insights. By revising such famously paradoxical figures as the Great Goddess, the Eleusinian deities, Dionysus, Odysseus, and the Sirens, Woolf illustrates the links between epistemological and metaphysical assumptions and war, empire, patriarchy, capitalism, and fascism. At the same time, her use of parataxis to invoke ancient myth unsettles authorial control and empowers readers to participate in making meaning out of her juxtaposed fragments. In contrast to T. S. Eliot’s more prominent mythic method, which seeks to control the anarchy of modern life, Woolf’s paratactic method envisions more livable forms of sociality by destabilizing meaning in her novels, an agenda that aligns better with our contemporary understandings of modernism.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258200
ISBN-10: 0814258204
Pagini: 172
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Classical Memories/Modern Identities
ISBN-10: 0814258204
Pagini: 172
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Classical Memories/Modern Identities
Recenzii
“Virginia Woolf’s Mythic Method is profound and valuable. Its profoundness is reflected in the fact that it does not confine its mythic study to limited analysis of mythic influence, method, structure, and thought, but goes deep into the conflict, fusion, and reconstruction of mythical, feminist, and patriarchal thoughts in Woolf’s novels.” —Fen Gao, Style
“What is perhaps most valuable about Virginia Woolf’s Mythic Method is that Smith reinvigorates what has been falsely perceived as a tired school of criticism and renders fresh understandings of Woolf’s most commonly taught novels.” —Lisa Tyler, Virginia Woolf Miscellany
“Smith manages to relate a seemingly old-fashioned approach to current theories such as new materialisms and their plea for non-binary epistemologies and (sexual) politics … Smith is able to gain innovative insights into all the novels analysed that turn the reading into a worthwhile endeavour.” —Nadine Böhm-Schnitker, Anglistik
“Virginia Woolf’s Mythic Method is a fresh, nuanced, and innovative examination of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Between the Acts viewed through the dual lenses of myth and modernism. Smith’s richly layered analysis and excellent scholarly sources position this book to shape future interpretations of Woolf’s work.” —Vara Neverow, editor of Virginia Woolf Miscellany
“Amy Smith reveals an aesthetically complex and politically nuanced ‘paratactic mythic method’ in Woolf’s work. Smith’s meticulous character studies, her rich engagement with modernist scholarship, and her ingenious exegeses of archaic figures challenge and enrich our understanding of Woolf’s feminism and literary craft.” —Benjamin D. Hagen, editor, Woolf Studies Annual
“Although subjects of myth and Modernism are often polarized, [Smith] blends them and creates a new space for scholarship and discussion. Modernist scholars, as well as scholars of Greek mythology and Modernism, will all benefit from reading this book.” —Elizabeth Laughlin, Rocky Mountain Review
“This monograph is useful to those familiar with Woolf’s oeuvre or literary modernism in general, but it is also relevant to those interested in classics and the political context of the early twentieth century.” —Rhiannon Easterbrook, Greece & Rome
“Smith’s arguments … allow for a nuanced understanding of Woolf’s authorial style and her works. … Those with even a cursory knowledge will find insights into the historical uses of classics both to support and to hinder social progress.” —Miriam Kamil, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Notă biografică
Amy C. Smith is Associate Professor of English at Lamar University.
Extras
In his 1923 review of James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot formulated his influential modernist “mythical method,” a theory that for a long time dominated modernist studies of myth. Eliot praises Joyce for shaping the jumble of modern life into a meaningful order through mythic parallels. In that essay Eliot may be inaccurately projecting his own idée fixe on to Ulysses, since his description of the method more accurately fits The Waste Land. While Eliot’s theory has often served as a paradigm for how modernist authors used myth, I argue that Virginia Woolf developed her own original method of incorporating myth into modernist literature. Her method’s divergence from Eliot’s shows in the absence of Woolf in many studies of myth in modernism, including Michael Bell’s classic Literature, Modernism, and Myth, which includes chapters on all the major male modernists as well as Latin American Boom authors and postmodern writers, but none on Woolf.
Inspired by the structure of archaic oral literature, Woolf’s mythic method reflects her feminist vision of the modern world. Eliot’s mythic method was, in his own words, “a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history,” an impulse that Jean Mills characterizes as the search for “a reaffirmation of masculine hierarchies in mythic structures” following the destruction of World War I. Despite her friendship with Eliot, the problems that concern Woolf stem not from a failure of control and order but from an excess of the masculine hierarchies that Eliot mourned. Woolf dreads not the anarchy of contemporary history but the oily craving for power and domination that the modern world evinces. In contrast to Eliot, who believes that classicism is the “goal toward which all good literature strives,” Woolf’s literary goals are not classical at all but rather archaic. Rather than seeing myth as a straightforward unifying force with the role “of controlling, of ordering” reality, her careful practice of translating Greek tragedies led her to view myth as a powerfully disordered and disordering influence and to prioritize the indeterminate style of oral literature.
In this study I combine the long, though recently neglected, scholarly conversation about myth in Woolf’s fiction with more recent conversations regarding Woolf’s treatment of social and political issues; the influence of Jane Harrison’s scholarship and Woolf’s reading in Greek on her intellectual and political views; and Woolf’s preference for indeterminacy in narrative structures. As early as 1956, with Joseph Blotner’s study of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Oedipal conflict in To the Lighthouse, scholars began analyzing Woolf’s use of Greek myth. This topic gained prominence in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s with feminist analyses of Woolf’s allusions to Greek and Egyptian goddesses, but it has been relatively neglected as an area of critical inquiry in recent years. Over the last twenty years, attention has turned to Woolf’s treatment of social and political issues in her fiction and nonfiction, building on feminist scholarship to address issues of empire, race, the British class system, fascism, war, and many other topics. A third track of scholarship, which has lately seen a resurgence, examines how Harrison’s scholarship and Woolf’s own reading of Greek literature and philosophy influenced Woolf’s intellectual and political views, but it largely does not address the position and function of myth in the artistic expression of these views. Finally, a range of scholars examine Woolf’s refusal to settle meanings or resolve inconsistencies within her fiction. Woolf’s strategies for incorporating myth in her fiction have not generally been part of these important conversations, yet I will argue in this book that Woolf often explores these ideas through a particular type of allusion to Greek myth. I aim to bring together these areas of Woolf studies, reviving the study of myth in Woolf’s work by showing that Woolf’s mythic method is a primary aesthetic vehicle for expressing critical views about the role of modern epistemological and metaphysical assumptions in social structures.
Inspired by the structure of archaic oral literature, Woolf’s mythic method reflects her feminist vision of the modern world. Eliot’s mythic method was, in his own words, “a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history,” an impulse that Jean Mills characterizes as the search for “a reaffirmation of masculine hierarchies in mythic structures” following the destruction of World War I. Despite her friendship with Eliot, the problems that concern Woolf stem not from a failure of control and order but from an excess of the masculine hierarchies that Eliot mourned. Woolf dreads not the anarchy of contemporary history but the oily craving for power and domination that the modern world evinces. In contrast to Eliot, who believes that classicism is the “goal toward which all good literature strives,” Woolf’s literary goals are not classical at all but rather archaic. Rather than seeing myth as a straightforward unifying force with the role “of controlling, of ordering” reality, her careful practice of translating Greek tragedies led her to view myth as a powerfully disordered and disordering influence and to prioritize the indeterminate style of oral literature.
In this study I combine the long, though recently neglected, scholarly conversation about myth in Woolf’s fiction with more recent conversations regarding Woolf’s treatment of social and political issues; the influence of Jane Harrison’s scholarship and Woolf’s reading in Greek on her intellectual and political views; and Woolf’s preference for indeterminacy in narrative structures. As early as 1956, with Joseph Blotner’s study of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Oedipal conflict in To the Lighthouse, scholars began analyzing Woolf’s use of Greek myth. This topic gained prominence in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s with feminist analyses of Woolf’s allusions to Greek and Egyptian goddesses, but it has been relatively neglected as an area of critical inquiry in recent years. Over the last twenty years, attention has turned to Woolf’s treatment of social and political issues in her fiction and nonfiction, building on feminist scholarship to address issues of empire, race, the British class system, fascism, war, and many other topics. A third track of scholarship, which has lately seen a resurgence, examines how Harrison’s scholarship and Woolf’s own reading of Greek literature and philosophy influenced Woolf’s intellectual and political views, but it largely does not address the position and function of myth in the artistic expression of these views. Finally, a range of scholars examine Woolf’s refusal to settle meanings or resolve inconsistencies within her fiction. Woolf’s strategies for incorporating myth in her fiction have not generally been part of these important conversations, yet I will argue in this book that Woolf often explores these ideas through a particular type of allusion to Greek myth. I aim to bring together these areas of Woolf studies, reviving the study of myth in Woolf’s work by showing that Woolf’s mythic method is a primary aesthetic vehicle for expressing critical views about the role of modern epistemological and metaphysical assumptions in social structures.
Cuprins
Acknowledgments Introduction A Paratactic Method Chapter 1 Clarissa’s Eleusinian Desires Chapter 2 Septimus’s Dionysian Sacrifice Chapter 3 Peter Walsh’s Primitivist Odyssey Chapter 4 The Goddess in the Lighthouse Chapter 5 Harmonious Discord in Between the Acts Bibliography Index
Descriere
Reinvigorates modernist analysis of myth in Virginia Woolf’s fiction by illuminating Woolf’s use of parataxis to engage both myth and contemporary social and political issues.