Language, time, and identity in Woolf's The waves : the subject in Empire's shadow / Michael Weinman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weinman, Michael.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. Waves.

Woolf, Virginia.

Physical Description:

ix, 163 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, [2012]

Summary:

Focusing on the importance of formal experimentation for matters of content and meaning, this original interpretation of what Woolf called her "play-poem" argues that with its depiction of a certain social setting-populated by individuals who are often traumatized, hurt, and socially isolated-The Waves must be read both as an attestation to the social estrangement inherent in modern and metropolitan life and as an allegory of the collapse of the classical subject itself, as a model and a phenomenon, both in literature and in ordinary life. This book differs from other approaches to Woolf as a modernist dramatist of modernity; while others highlight the historically contingent features of Woolf's dramatic interpretation of her times, Michael Weinman detects the emergence of an expressly atemporal model from this historical moment. The key mechanism that makes a new insight into Woolf s modernist agenda possible is the discovery of Judith Butler's theory of subjectivity as presenting a thesis that analyzes precisely that which Woolf, in this work of fiction, dramatizes: a figure, argued here to be the protagonist of Woolfs work, called the "conspiratorial intersubjective self." In short, Weinman demonstrates that the historical circumstances of Woolf's "modernist" project in The Waves serve both concrete and allegorical roles, and that thinking about this work together with Judith Butler's "performativity thesis" is the best way to see how. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 The First Chiasm: Identity and Language

1 From the Latin Lesson to the Ball: Neville Steps, Rhoda Tiptoes, on the Verge 31

2 The Dinner Party, the Music Hall, the Attic Room: Setting a Square upon an Oblong 37

3 Dawn or Break of Day: Bernard and "The World without a Self 40

Chapter 2 The Second Chiasm: Time and Narrative

1 Stamping Beasts: Hearing the Rhythm of Life 49

2 The Interludes: Naming the Chronic Condition of Nature's Speechless Cycles 53

3 Bernard against Death: The "Majestic March of Day across the Sky" 61

Chapter 3 The Third Chiasm: Unity and Diversity

1 A Kiss Apart, a Sorrow Shared: Primary School and the Problem of Intersubjectivity 77

2 "Love is Simple": Bodies Collide, Souls Connect at College, at the Ball 79

3 "Hold it": Percival and the "Seven-Sided Flower" 83

4 "These Meetings, These Partings, Finally Destroy Us": Neville and Jinny as Lovers 95

5 "The Shock of Meeting": Can We "Mount Together" at Hampton Court? 105

6 "The Outskirts of Every Agony": The "Terrible Suffering" of Separate Existence 113

7 "I am not One Person": Bernard, Life, and the Lives of "Our Friends" 117.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739147122

0739147129

OCLC:

754724634