Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study

by Emma Simone

Overview

Explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from an existential-phenomenological perspective

Breaking fresh ground in Woolfian scholarship, this study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context.
Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.

Key Features
The first sustained discussion of Woolf from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin HeideggerEmphasises the thematic and conceptual links between the works of Woolf and Heidegger, so that each chapter focuses upon the explication of particular issues and aspects of Being-in-the-worldCovers a wide range of Woolf's fictional and non-fictional writing

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474441278
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Emma Simone completed her PhD on Virginia Woolf at Macquarie Universityin 2012 and is currently an independent scholar. Her research interests include the influence of ancient Greek literature and philosophy upon the writings of Woolf and Heidegger.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements *

Abbreviations *

Introduction *

Chapter 1 – Being-in-the-world *

Chapter 2 – A Sense of Place *

Chapter 3 – Being-at-home and Homelessness *

Chapter 4 – Historical Dasein *

Chapter 5 – Moments of Being and the Everyday *

Conclusion – Confluences, Divergences, and Future Directions *

What People are Saying About This

In this insightful, carefully researched and accessible study, Emma Simone provides the first sustained comparative analysis of Woolf’s and Heidegger’s accounts of Being-in-the-world. Effortlessly weaving together readings and examples from Woolf’s novels, essays and autobiographical writings, Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world not only comprises an important addition to scholarly assessments of Woolf’s philosophical thought, but demonstrates with great acuity the vital ways in which Woolf’s philosophy is fundamentally tied to her social and political concerns and commitments.

Lorraine Sim

In this insightful, carefully researched and accessible study, Emma Simone provides the first sustained comparative analysis of Woolf’s and Heidegger’s accounts of Being-in-the-world. Effortlessly weaving together readings and examples from Woolf’s novels, essays and autobiographical writings, Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world not only comprises an important addition to scholarly assessments of Woolf’s philosophical thought, but demonstrates with great acuity the vital ways in which Woolf’s philosophy is fundamentally tied to her social and political concerns and commitments.

Editorial Reviews

[...]a nuanced, readable account of the affinities between Woolf’s and Heidegger’s representations of the interplay between self and world. Simone is particularly attentive to the ways in which Woolf departs from Heidegger, contrasting her alertness to the systems of power that structure the individual’s existence in the world with Heidegger’s apolitical philosophy.

The Year's Work in English Studies

This existential-phenomenological text shows an excellent understanding and critical insight of Woolfian scholarship with a high degree of competence of Heideggerian philosophy as its lens for critical analysis

Avello Publishing Journal - Jason Wakefield

In this insightful, carefully researched and accessible study, Emma Simone provides the first sustained comparative analysis of Woolf’s and Heidegger’s accounts of Being-in-the-world. Effortlessly weaving together readings and examples from Woolf’s novels, essays and autobiographical writings, Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world not only comprises an important addition to scholarly assessments of Woolf’s philosophical thought, but demonstrates with great acuity the vital ways in which Woolf’s philosophy is fundamentally tied to her social and political concerns and commitments.

Lorraine Sim