Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography

Overview

Where other works of literary criticism are absorbed with the question--How to read a book?--Imagining Virginia Woolf asks a slightly different but more intriguing one: how does one read an author? Maria DiBattista answers this by undertaking an experiment in critical biography. The subject of this work is not Virginia Woolf, the person who wrote the novels, criticism, letters, and famous diary, but a different being altogether, someone or something Maria DiBattista identifies as "the figment of the author." This is the Virginia Woolf who lives intermittently in the pages of her writings and in the imagination of her readers. Drawing on Woolf's own extensive remarks on the pleasures and perils of reading, DiBattista argues that reading Woolf, in fact reading any author, involves an encounter with this imaginative figment, whose distinct, stylistic traits combine to produce that beguiling phantom--the literary personality.

DiBattista reveals a writer who possessed not a single personality, but a cluster of distinct, yet complementary identities: the Sibyl of Bloomsbury, the Author, the Critic, the World Writer, and the Adventurer, the last of which, DiBattista claims, unites them all.

Imagining Virginia Woolf provides an original way of reading, one that captures with variety and subtlety the personality that exists only in Woolf's works and in the minds of her readers.

Editorial Reviews

Taking an approach that combines biography and literary criticism to draw out an abstract of the author's life and personae, independent of historical fact, Princeton English professor DiBatistta (Fast-Talking Dames) pieces together a portrait of Virginia Woolf as experienced by readers. Taking one of modern writing's most famous authors, DiBatistta examines the "figment of the author" that coalesces through the author's presence in her own writings, and how readers get to know this representative Woolf. The personae DiBatttista identifies and examines are the Author, the Critic, the World Writer, the Adventurer and the youthful Sibyl of the Drawing Room. For general fans of literary criticism or of Woolf's writing in particular, DiBattista's experiment will offer an intriguing perspective on Woolf's relationship to her art and her audience, but casual readers will find it frustratingly cryptic; it doesn't help that Woolf herself is an author who elicits extreme reactions, further limiting the work's appeal.
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Author Information

Bio of Maria DiBattista

Maria DiBattista is professor of English and comparative literature at Princeton University. Her books include Virginia Woolf's Major Novels and Fast-Talking Dames.

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews available at this time. To add your review, Register or Sign In to your account using our free eBook Library Software.

Additional Info

Imprint

Princeton University Press

Filesize

1.60 MB

Number of Pages

208

eBook ISBN

9781400830046