Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere
Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere relates Woolf's literary reviews and essays to early twentieth-century debates about the value of 'highbrow' culture, the methods of instruction in universities and adult education, and the importance of an educated public for the realization of democratic goals. By focusing on Woolf's theories and practice of reading, Melba Cuddy-Keane refutes assumptions about Woolf's modernist elitism, revealing instead a writer who was pedagogically oriented, publicly engaged and committed to the ideal of classless intellectuals working together in reciprocal exchange. Woolf emerges as a stimulating theorist of the unconscious, of dialogic reading, of historicist criticism and of value judgments, while her theoretically informed but accessible prose challenges us to reflect on academic writing today. Combining a wealth of historical detail with a penetrating analysis of Woolf's essays, this 2003 study will alter our views of Woolf, of modernism and of intellectual work.
- Provides insights into Virginia Woolf as a publicly engaged writer challenging notions of modernist intellectual's aloofness from the public sphere
- Examines documents including radio broadcasts, periodicals and newspapers, and materials on the history of books and publishing
- Written in a clear and accessible style
Reviews & endorsements
"I enthusiastically recommend the book to all readers, common and academic. ...[it] will stimulate important thinking and provide us, in our own dilemmas over education, social discourse and the future health of democracy, with a thoughtful and strategic example for negotiating these complexities." Jeanette McVicker, SUNY-Fredonia
"In this meticulous, often brilliant book, Cuddy-Keane focuses on both the 'cultural contexts' and 'critical practice' of Woolf's more than 500 essays and reviews on literary history and criticism.... Readers of this groundbreaking book--one of the most important studies of Woolf in years--will hereafter approach Woolf's critical writings with closer attention and increased respect. Essential." Choice
Product details
January 2007Paperback
9780521035385
248 pages
228 × 154 × 19 mm
0.377kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: a wider sphere
- Part I. Cultural Contexts:
- 1. Democratic highbrow: Woolf and the classless intellectual
- 2. Woolf, English studies and the making of the (new) common reader
- Part II. Critical Practice:
- 3. Woolf and the theory and pedagogy of reading
- Postscript: intellectual work today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index.