8:235 Readings in Twentieth Century Literatures I:
Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group

This course will focus on the aesthetic theories and artistic practices of the Bloomsbury Group, named after the London neighborhood that, to them, represented a break with their Victorian past. A circle of friends and lovers, sisters, brothers, wives and husbands, which included philosophers (Bertrand Russell) and economists (John Maynard Keynes), Bloomsbury devoted itself, for the most part, to art. At the center of the group's literary experimentation was Virginia Woolf whose novels, essays, and biographies made major contributions to literary modernism and contemporary feminism. Woolf''s writings were influenced by the Bloomsbury novelist and critic, E.M. Forster, and by the painters of Bloomsbury, especially her sister Vanessa Bell and her friends Duncan Grant and Roger Fry.

Questions that will guide our study include:

To what extent and ends did participation in an influential cultural group shape the work of its individual members?

To what extent did the close interactions among self-consciously "modern" visual and literary artists as well as economists and philosophers make possible "new" artistic responses to early twentieth-century social conditions?

What are the political, moral, and historical positions represented in the group's writing and art?

Readings for the course will include fiction by Woolf and Forster, essays in literary and art criticism by Woolf, Forster, Clive Bell, and Roger Fry; memoirs by and biographies of various Bloomsbury members; and critical studies of their work. Throughout the three-week semester, we will view drawings, portraits, landscapes, still life paintings, book covers, pottery, fabrics, and the many other kinds of furnishings fashioned by Bloomsbury artists.

Students are required to attend regularly; participate actively in class discussion; write three informal papers and present them orally in class; and as final project, write an 8-10 page critical paper and present it orally at the end-of-semester Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury Conference.