Virginia Woolf: Love, Life, Writing

Undergraduate / Graduate

How to write a life? Virginia Woolf grappled with this question, and so will we in this course. How, indeed, does one write, not only one's own life, but the life of others, particularly when strong feelings are involved? We will study Woolf's reflections on how to capture a life along with her attempts to do so, delving into her essays, novels, and life-writing (letters, diaries, and auto/biographical works). With the different literary genres, along with Woolf's various engagements with other arts, we will see different approaches to re/creating personalities and inter-personal relationships emerge. To help us understand Woolf, we will examine her Victorian background, her Bloomsbury circle, and the Modernism with which she is associated. We will also engage with relevant theories of selfhood, sexuality, and auto/biography. At stake in our investigations is the role and critical potential of the personal in literary production. We will discuss this while taking up subjects such as familial relationships, the meaning of friendship, and the complexities of love. Throughout, we will consider Woolf's relevance for today, and we will conclude with how Woolf's own life has been taken up by others. (Fiction, 20th/21st)