Modules

Virginia Woolf: Fiction, Feeling, Form (EAS3219)

30 credits

On this module we will study the works of Virginia Woolf, looking closely at her major novels but also investigating her letters, diaries, essays and short stories.

Virginia Woolf is a major figure in literary modernism; her oeuvre includes some of the most influential works of the twentieth century. In addition to being crucial to literary modernism, Woolf is also arguably one of the finest writers of the body, of emotion and sensation, of what it is to feel and to be alive.

This course will study her works mostly chronologically because her work changes so dramatically from the beginning to the end of her career. Woolf constantly experimented with the form of the novel: her work moves from the sympathetic, rolling rhythms of Mrs Dalloway to the jagged unease of Between the Acts, from the teasing playfulness of her animal stories to the highly-wrought poetic prose of The Waves.

This module aims to bring these aspects of Woolf into focus through close readings of the complexity and dynamism, and sudden tonal shifts, of her writing. Through this module, you will gain a broad and intimate knowledge of Woolf’s work and of its far-reaching importance.