Overview
- Traces the metaphorical, ecological, and intertextual significance of water in Woolf's oeuvre
- Explores links between elemental materiality and literary form
- Sheds fresh light on time and memory, the body and sexuality, and silence in literary modernism
Part of the book series: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies (GSLS)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
“Dirschauer’s monograph heralds an exhaustive and innovative exploration into Woolf ’s works and, more specifically, her modernist waterscapes that merit in-depth yet long-overdue observations. It is no exaggeration to liken this book to a kaleidoscope, for, to say the least, it is intertextual (with references to English Romantics and modernist contemporaries), philosophical (in its mediation on Bachelard’s metapoetics and construction of poetics of water), sociological (by touching upon gender issues) and, most of all, ecological (due to a steady flow of natural and nonhuman components). Labyrinthine as it appears, it is by no means vertiginous; but rather, it exudes the lucidity and fluency of water and converges with Woolf ’s unfathomable waters to infatuate us readers at the shore. We can also take this book as a “deep reservoir” (67), in which, similar to what Dirschauer coins “intratextual [sic] continuities” (215), a consummate confluence of Woolf ’s oeuvre resonates in concert.” (Pengfei Zhang, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou)
“This deeply thoughtful phenomenological study makes a welcome move from psychology to poetics in its original and illuminating account of Woolf’s imaginative engagement with ‘waterscapes’. Ranging over all the forms of Woolf’s writing, Dirschauer contributes significantly to recent ecocritical readings of Woolf, beautifully mapping a network which encompasses English Romantic poets and Woolf’s contemporaries.” (Mark Hussey, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Pace University, USA)
“In Modernist Waterscapes Marlene Dirschauer has captured the complexity, fullness, wonder, and fluid power of Woolf’s writing. Readers always notice the flow of water and presence of the sea in her fiction, but no one has brought it all together in such a comprehensive way until now. Dirschauer establishes Woolf’s treatment of water as metaphor and poetic inspiration while at the same time showing her emphasis on the independent materiality of its many forms existing outside human concerns. This is a profound and delightfully illuminating study of Woolf’s immersion in the literary past as she creates radically new aesthetic forms that shape human connections with the vast web of the biosphere and its natural forces. A necessary new book for anyone interested in Virginia Woolf.” (Louise Westling, Professor Emerita of English and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Marlene Dirschauer holds a PhD in Comparative Literature. Currently, she works as Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research interests are English modernism as well as religious writings of the early modern era.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Modernist Waterscapes
Book Subtitle: Water, Imagination and Materiality in the Works of Virginia Woolf
Authors: Marlene Dirschauer
Series Title: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13421-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-13420-3Published: 05 January 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-13423-4Published: 06 January 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-13421-0Published: 04 January 2023
Series ISSN: 2578-9694
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5188
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 221
Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, European Literature, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies