Virginia Woolf
(1882 - 1941)
Timothy H. Wilson
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Virginia Woolf is one of the most important artists within the "Modernist" literary movement. She was a pioneer of the use of "stream of consciousness" narrative.
Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is included on my list of the list of 101 Greatest Books of the Western Canon.
In addition, the following texts are included in my list of 1001 Great Books of the Western Canon:
Jacob's Room (1922)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
A Room of One's Own (1929)
The Waves (1931)
The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction (1917 - 39)
Course Materials
Course Materials
An introduction to the intellectual roots of "Modernism" in such thinkers as Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Finally, an introduction to some of the aesthetic movements of literary modernism -- in particular how Modernism's exploration of the "fragmentation" of meaning and experience was connected with Cubism in the visual arts.
Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and the Phenomenology of Time
Lecture slides for a course on "Time and Narrative in Prose Fiction" (Winter 2020) -- covering the intellectual and aesthetic context of Virginia Woolf's novel: Mrs Dalloway. The radical historicism and relativism of the "Third Wave of Modernity" are related to Modernist aesthetic movements such as Cubism, Imagism and narrative innovations such as "stream of consciousness". Finally, Woolf's unique articulation of the lived experience of temporality (in contradistinction from the "objective time" of the clock) is discussed.
Woolf's To the Lighthouse: An Introduction
Detailed lecture slides for a course on "Time and History in Literature" (Fall 2025). The lecture covers ways in which the novel can be seen as autobiographical. The relation of Woolf's fiction to Heidegger's phenomenology of time is explored. Woolf's narrative technique of "free indirect discourse" is examined. The lecture then systematically goes through the novel highlighting key thematics, such as: the quarrel of philosophy and poetry, the gathering together of phenomena that is the soul, the question of the meaning of life and Woolf's concept of "moments of being" as described in the novel.
Reflections on the Great Books
Reflections on the Great Books
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Jacob's Room (1922)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
A Room of One's Own (1929)
The Waves (1931)
The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction (1917 - 39)
External Links
External Links
On-line texts at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Virginia Woolf at Internet Archive
Virginia Woolf entry at Wikipedia
Virginia Woolf entry at The British Library
Virginia Woolf at The School of Life
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