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Information to Users INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type o f computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. EBgher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zed) Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 A POETICS OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY; THE CREATION OF “VIRGINIA WOOLF’ DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Docotor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Julia Irene Keller, B.A., M. A. ***** The Ohio State University 1996 Dissertation Committee: Professor Marlene Longenecker, Adviser Approved by Professor Frank Donoghue Adviser Professor Debra Moddelmog Department of English UMI Number: 9710591 UMI Microform 9710591 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT After a long period of critical neglect, biography of late has come into its own as a genre, becoming the focus of an increasing number of critical studies. Yet too many current theorists of biography overlook critiques of specific biographies in their haste to generalize about the genre. Using five biographies of Virginia Woolf, I explore the ways by which literary biographers create their respective images of an author. While the various tenets of contemporary critical theory that are grouped under the general heading “postmodernism” have, in many ways, made studies such as mine inevitable, as we now recognize the constructed nature of all biographical portraits, I believe that a poetics of biography must be grounded not only in theory, but in an analysis of the specific rhetorical strategies employed by biographers. I analyze Virginia Woolf: A Biography (1972) by Quentin Bell; Woman o f Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (1978) by Phyllis Rose; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984) by Lyndall Gordon; Virginia Woolf: The Impact o f Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (1989) by Louise DeSalvo; and Virginia Woolf (1995) by James King according to how each work embodies Virginia Woolf; how each presents her as a woman; how each deals with her literary output; and how each manifests a self-consciousness about the inherent artificiality of all biographical portraits. Close readings of biographies — in particular, multiple biographies of an individual — suggest ways that postmodern critics might approach the genre of biography, acknowledging its artistry while recognizing its provisionality. Ill Dedicated to the memory of my father. Dr. James Richard Keller IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my choice of members for a dissertation committee (and their choice of me). Professor Marlene Longenecker is that rare blend of conscientious scholar and connoisseur of literature; she tempers a keen critical acumen with a passion for fine writing. Her insights and generosity have strengthened, deepened and sustained this project. Professor Frank Donoghue added an invaluable perspective about the history of literary biography. Professor Debra Moddelmog kindly shared the fimits of her own profound explorations of biography. Both brought their formidable critical intellects to bear upon their readings of these pages. It is a pleasure to thank Cartha Sexton, administrator extraordinaire, who enables English graduate students to concentrate on literature, not bureaucracy. Finally, I must thank Susan Phillips and Carolyn Focht, two dear fiiends whose encouragement was essential. VITA November 1, 1956 ........................................................ Bom - Huntington, West Virginia 1976 B.A, English, Marshall University 1981 M.A., English, Marshall University 1980 - 1981 ................................... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English Marshall University Huntington, West Virginia 1981 - present........................................................ Staff Writer, The Cobtmbus Dispatch Columbus, Ohio 1993 - 1996 Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field; English VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................ ii Dedication..................................................................................................................... iv Acknowlegments............................................................................................................ v Vita................................................................................................................................. vi Introduction................................................................................................................. I Chapters: 1. A History of the Criticism of Biography ............................................................ 23 2. Claiming the Biographical Body ........................................................................ 67 3. Feminist Literary Biography and “Virginia Woolf’ ........................................... 112 4. Work and Life in Literary Biography ................................................................. 170 5. Self-Reflexivity, Literary Biography and “Virginia Woolf’ ................................ 221 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 269 Vll INTRODUCTION Certain literary figures, like certain works of literature, endure. The reasons why this is so — why, that is, one literary figure becomes such a familiar icon that her or his face adorns T-shirts and bookbags, and the image becomes the centerpiece of innumerable biographies, doctoral dissertations and learned societies, while other figures, perhaps equally worthy, sink into oblivion — is a mystery, very like the mystery of why one person falls in love with another: who knows what inscrutable alchemy occurs? Why one person and not another? In the case of a literary icon, it is as if an entire culture, or generation, or sometimes many generations, has fallen in love. “The power of certain lives to draw endlessly repeated reassessments - Johnson, Byron, Napoleon, Queen Victoria, D.H. Lawrence, Plath — is a peculiar mystery,” writes Richard Holmes in “Inventing the Truth”: It suggests that they hold up particular mirrors to each succeeding generation of biographers, almost as the classical myths were endlessly retold by the Greek dramatists, to renew their own versions of contemporary identity. Each generation sees itself anew in its chosen subjects. (19) Perhaps. We will never know just why certain artists and their images captivate while others do not; yet it may provide some comfort that, even if reasons are beyond our ken, results are not. We are able to track the tangible impact of our literary obsessions. For where they manifest themselves most frequently and ostentatiously is in biographies, those “endlessly repeated reassessments” to which Holmes alluded, and it is to biography that we can turn for confirmation of what intrigues us as a culture, what challenges us as scholars, what haunts us as readers. On the short list of British and American authors whose images may be said to represent twentieth-century literature in the popular imagination, Virginia Woolfs name surely would appear, along with, perhaps, that of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some might quarrel with the list, and claim that other authors have produced superior work, but that is beside the point; these authors would be instantly recognizable both to literary scholars and the general public. ‘ Virginia Woolfs “significance as a cultural icon” (viii), as Julia Briggs phrases it in an introduction to a collection of essays on Virginia Woolfs novels, is irrefutable. Photographs of Virginia Woolfs long, mournful face, a face that seems to drop from her cheekbones like a sheet hung from a cliff, are part of the essential iconography of the twentieth century. People who have seen her picture think they know her — and, more to the point, think they know her work: “The delicate face suggested refinement, esthetic withdrawal, a commitment to the contemplative rather than the active life,” writes
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