Virginia Woolf's Renaissance: Woman Reader or Common Reader?

by Juliet Dusinberre

Overview

Dusinberre's book explores Woolf's search, in The Common Reader and other non-fictional writings, for an alternative literary tradition for women. Of equal interest to students of Virginia Woolf and of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing, it discusses Montaigne, Donne, Sir John Harington, Dorothy Osborne, Madame de Sevigne, Pepys and Bunyan, together with forms of writing, such as essays, letters and diaries, traditionally associated with women. Questions about printing, the body and the relation between amateurs and professionals create fascinating connections between the early modern period and Virginia Woolf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333681046
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	05/30/1997
Series:	Woman Reader or Common Reader?
Edition description:	1997
Pages:	281
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Juliet Dusinberre is the author of Shakespeare and the Nature of Women and Alice to the Lighthouse. She is a Fellow in English at Girton College, Cambridge

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements - Virginia Woolf's Renaissance: Amateurs and Professionals - Montaigne's Essays: Them and Us - Virginia Woolf Reads John Donne - Letters as Resistance: Dorothy Osborne, Madame de Sevigne and Virginia Woolf - Diaries: Samuel Pepys and Virginia Woolf - Bunyan and Virginia Woolf: a History and a Language of Their Own - The Body and the Book - Notes - Abbreviations - Bibliography - Index

Editorial Reviews

Explores Virginia Woolf's affinity with the early modern period and her sense of being reborn as writer and reader through the creation of an alternative tradition of reading and writing whose roots go back to the Elizabethans and beyond. The author, a Fellow in English at Girton College, Cambridge, critiques Woolf's ideas through a discussion of particular writers<-->Montaigne, Donne, Pepys and Bunyan, Dorothy Osborne and Madame de S<'e>vign<'e>. She considers the forms traditionally associated with women, such as the essay, the personal letter and diary, in the context of printing, the body, and the relationship between amateurs and professionals. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

“…Dusinberre's text has much to offer Woolf scholars. The best parts of Dusinberre's text are her richly contextualized readings of her selected “outsiders”; placing them in the context of other writers—both contemporaneous and distant—as well as the social, political, and cultural events which impinge upon them, she provides a detailed exploration of Woolf's multi-leveled connections to these writers. Dusinberre's readings move us around, as Montaigne advocates, taking us in many new directions, and encouraging us to trespass on new territory.”—Woolf Studies Annual

From the Publisher