Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is about the life and work of Virginia Woolf, with a focus on her novel To the Lighthouse. I open by considering Woolf as more poet than novelist. Then I discuss Woolf’s biography, especially her distinguished lineage, her participation in the Bloomsbury Group, and what she called her “madness.” I further explore her literary life as critic and novelist, her shift from mainstream publishing to independent publishing, and her move from realist fiction to various kinds of experimental fiction. I also examine her feminist politics and deepening radicalism, and her modernist and feminist manifestoes. I explain the stream-of-consciousness technique governing To the Lighthouse. Borrowing from my own academic advisor, I then read the novel as a portrayal of the 20th-century artistic woman usurping and extending the function of the 19th-century domestic woman in her affective literacy, her social sympathy, and her ability to bring people together. Borrowing from Erich Auerbach, I inquire whether this apotheosis of the modern artist portends a humanist utopia or an elitist dystopia. Finally, countering those socio-political readings, and borrowing from James Wood, I interpret art in To the Lighthouse as a confrontation with and a vision of the raw void or vortex at the heart of life—a confrontation and a vision even unto death, whether the death of the individual artist or of the social order at large. Please like, share, comment, subscribe—and please enjoy. The slideshow corresponding to the lecture is below the paywall.
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