Virginia Woolf and Fascism: Resisting the Dictators' Seduction

by Merry Pawlowski

Overview

This unique collection of essays, edited by leading Woolf scholar, brings together for the first time a serious consideration of Virginia Woolf's writing within the political context of fascism. Virginia Woolf and Fascism probes Woolf's fiction and non-fiction from Mrs. Dalloway in 1927 to Between the Acts , 1941, for her responses not only to the growing menaces of dictators abroad, but also to mounting evidence of fascist ideology at home in England. The essays present a portrait of Woolf as a woman writer who was politically engaged, and actively protesting against a worldview which aggressively targeted women for oppression.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349420964
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2001
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2001
Pages:	241
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

QUENTIN BELL formerly Professor of Art, University of Leeds, Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford and Professor of the History and Theory of Art, University of Sussex JESSICA BERMAN Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Maryland Baltimore County MARIE-LUISE GATTENS Associate Professor of German, Southern Methodist University LIA GIACHERO Author LEIGH CORAL HARRIS Women's Studies Programme, University of California, Santa Barbara MARY JOANNOU Senior Lecturer in English Studies, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge LISA LOW Professor of English, Pace University, New York City VARA S. NEVEROW Professor of English and Women's Studies, Southern Connecticut State University NATANIA ROSENFELD Lecturer in English, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois LORETTA STEC Associate Professor of English, San Francisco State University MOLLY ABEL TRAVIS Associate Professor of English, Tulane University

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Virginia Woolf at the Crossroads of Feminism, Fascism, and Art: An Introduction; M.M.Pawlowski PART I: FASCISM, HISTORY, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas ; Q.Bell Three Guineas , Fascism, and the Construction of Gender; M.L.Gättens Toward a Feminist Theory of the State: Virginia Woolf and Wyndham Lewis on Art, Gender, and Politics; M.M.Pawlowski Freudian Seduction and the Fallacies of Dictatorship; V.Neverow PART II: PRELUDES TO WAR: POLITICS IN THE NOVELS, AESTHETICS IN THE NONFICTION Acts of Artistic Vision, Acts of Aggression: Art and Abyssinia in Virginia Woolf's Fascist Italy; L.C.Harris 'Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind': Fascism and Chastity in Mrs. Dalloway; L.Low Of Oceans and Opposition: The Waves , Mosley and the New Party; J.Berman Monstrous Conjugations: The Anti-Fascist Writings of Virginia and Leonard Woolf; N.Rosenfeld PART III: VOICES AGAINST TYRANNY: WOOLF AMONG OTHER WRITERS 'Finding new words and creating new methods': Three Guineas and The Handmaid's Tale; M.Joannou Seduced by Fascism: Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, the Woman Who Did Not Write Three Guineas; L.Giachero External Fascism and Its 'Home Haunts' in the Leavises' Attacks on Bloomsbury and Woolf'; M.A.Travis Dystopian Modernism vs; Utopian Feminism: Burdekin, Woolf, and West Respond to the Rise of Fascism; L.Stec A Selected Bibliography on Virginia Woolf, Fascism, and Gender Index

Editorial Reviews

'...this splendid collection of essays...expands our appreciation of Woolf and other radical feminists of the late 1930s.' - Virginia Woolf Miscellany

From the Publisher