NUMBER 83 SPRING 2013 – TABLE of CONTENTS – – EVENTS, INFO and Cfps
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NUMBER 83 SPRING 2013 To the Readers Brown,” which criticizes the realist novelists of the – TABLE of CONTENTS – Woolf and Literary Genre previous generation for their superficial handling See page 8 of character. But this consciousness is evident Virginia Woolf’s formally daring works of fiction International Virginia Woolf elsewhere, as in the 1927 essay “Poetry, Fiction and spirited critiques of Edwardian realism have Society Column, and the Future.” Here, distinctions among genres earned her a reputation as an advocate of the Officers and Members-at-Large are little addressed; instead Woolf emphasizes the modern novel. But, we suggest, Woolf was an See page 40 “duties [ . ] discharged” (E4 434) by a given ambivalent advocate. She was skeptical of the – EVENTS, INFO and CFPs – genre in a given age. By the beginning of the stasis implied by the word “novel,” aware that About MLA 2014 in Chicago twentieth century, Woolf argues, lyric poetry and literary form must adapt to the needs of the age, See page 4 drama could no longer convey the complexity of and impatient for novelists to reflect deeply on their modern life. She predicts, “we are going in the About the 2013 and 2014 prose medium. direction of prose” (E4 435). This forecast might Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf reasonably be read as an effort to promote Woolf’s See page 4 Privately and publicly, Woolf often refers to herself own form. Prose was her natural medium; she as a “novelist” (e.g., The Diary of Virginia Woolf Louisville Conference 2013 report attempted verse rarely and unsuccessfully, and [D] 3 47, “Speech to the London and National & wrote drama only to amuse friends and family. As Society for Women’s Service,” “A Letter to a Young 2014 CFP further proof that Woolf predicts “the direction See page 5 Poet”). And she often refers to her long works of” her own work, her diary descriptions of The of fiction as “my novels,” but only in her private Virginia Woolf Miscellany Submissions Waves and The Years echo her 1927 description of writing (e.g., D3 12, D4 40, D5 79). Publicly, she Editorial note: While previously published work may be submitted for consideration, the original publication the novel of the future: “It will be written in prose, hesitates to identify any of her books as a “novel” must be acknowledged at the time of submission. but in prose which has many of the characteristics and when she does so identify, the word is buried Guest Editors & CFPs of poetry [ . ] It will be dramatic, yet not a among qualifications, as in her introduction to the Issue #84—Fall 2013 play. It will be read, not acted” (E4 435). But the Random House edition of Mrs. Dalloway. As this “Woolf and Animals” medium Woolf chose instinctively she analyzed hesitancy suggests, Woolf was readier to claim Kristin Czarnecki deliberately. Her prediction is informed not only for herself a profession (“novelist”) than to claim <[email protected]> and Vara Neverow <[email protected]> by her own project but also by wide reading in past for her books of fiction a genre. In the brief 1927 and contemporary literature, responsiveness to the essay “What is a Novel?,” Woolf writes of the Issue #85—Spring 2014 “Woolf and Materiality” postwar mood of “doubt and conflict” (E4 430), term in question, “this repetition of a single word The VWM invites discussion of how Woolf’s and an understanding of language as a “tool” to be does considerable damage. The reader comes to writings explore the material world. Articles adapted for use by every generation of writers. (The think thatVirginia since all these varieties of book have theWoolf that directly address the relationship betweenMiscellany word “tools” recurs throughout “Poetry, Fiction same name they must have the same nature.” She meaning and materiality are particularly and the Future” and a version of “Mr. Bennett and declares, “There is no such thing as ‘a novel’,” and welcome, and potential topics include fresh considerations of Woolf’s engagement Mrs. Brown,” as well as “Character in Fiction” [see condemns the term as a “highly potent bogey” that with: the natural sciences; philosophical E4 436 and 438, E3 430-32].) We might disagree must be “destroyed” (The Essays of Virginia Woolf conceptualisations of materiality; non/human with Woolf’s low estimation of the poetry and [E] 4 415). Like “Milton’s bogey” at the end of bodies and objects; fabrics and ‘things’; drama of her time, but we cannot fail to admire her A Room of One’s Own, who constrains women’s the materiality of language and art. Send capacious reading and ambitious synthesis. Woolf’s reading and writing of poetry, or the Angel in the submissions of not more than 2500 words to: Derek Ryan <[email protected]>> understanding of literary history finds clearest House, a phantom of Victorian femininity who by August 1, 2013 expression in her unfinished essay “Anon,” which impedes the young Woolf’s pen (E6 480-81), the Issue #86—Fall 2014 traces the development of literature from verse, the term “novel” obscures individuality, in this case Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield form of a preliterate, oral age, to prose, the form that of a work of art. Woolf resists not only “novel” Articles on the topic may include Woolf’s and of a post-Gutenberg age. In this scheme, verse is but also other pat words for literary forms. We see Mansfield’s writings, friendship, rivalry, shared created by a community while prose is created this resistance in the arch subtitles of Flush and interests; different ways they interconnect; by an individual. Woolf’s beloved Elizabethan Orlando (each is “A Biography”) and in Woolf’s literary experiments; modernist agendas; engagements with social, political, economic theater, which blends verse and prose and includes repeated description of her work as blending genres. concerns; attitudes to empire, nationality, the audience in its creation, falls in between The Waves is intended to be “prose yet poetry; a cultural belonging. We also welcome critical these poles, chronologically and formally. Woolf novel & a play” (D3 128) and a “playpoem” (D3 perspectives such as constructions of self and suspected that in her time prose was displacing 203); The Years should include “satire, comedy, identity, sexuality, ecology, critical animal verse as the more flexible and appealing medium. poetry, narrative [ . and possibly] a play, letters, studies, commodity culture and the marketplace, the visual arts. Send submissions of no more Woolf’s defense of fiction thus entails two poems” (D4 152). Alert to the gain and risk of than 2500 words to: naming a work’s genre, Woolf seeks the exact Kathryn Simpson strategies: promoting, however uneasily, its description for each of her books. <[email protected]> and dominant genre (the novel) and promoting its form Melinda Harvey (prose). She remarks with some discomfort in her Woolf was deeply conscious of the historical <[email protected]> review of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, “a interdependence and interaction of literary genres Deadline: March 1, 2014 wise and brilliant book about fiction [ . ] can and forms. This consciousness is not evident in For information or questions about be written without saying more than a sentence what is usually considered her most important the Virginia Woolf Miscellany about the medium in which a novelist works” (E4 essay on the novel, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. contact Vara Neverow <[email protected]> 462). Unlike Forster, Woolf was passionate about 1 prose, so much so that she begged Vita Sackville-West to “wire contemporary literature written in a host of genres, such as open letter, whats [sic] the essential difference between prose and poetry” poetry anthology, travel account, political pamphlet, etiquette book, (The Letters of Virginia Woolf [L] 3 281). Prose and verse were, psychoanalytic study, dream analysis, music history, and memoir to Woolf, the eternal rivals. Recognizing this helps us to see all (Woolmer). In addition, the Hogarth Lectures on Literature series attests of Woolf’s work, published and unpublished—her few forays to the publishers’ concern for the study of genre. In this issue, Joanna into verse excepted—as formally unified. Novel, short story, Lipking examines Woolf’s delight in the comedy and naturalness of biography, essay, diary, letter, drama: with every genre, Woolf William Congreve’s plays, and Melissa Sullivan considers Woolf’s probes the possibilities of English prose. tactful negotiation with middlebrow women writers in A Room of One’s Own. Scholarship on Woolf and literary genre usually pursues at least one of four approaches, which have evolved more or Appreciating Woolf’s keen writing and reading across genres, Woolf less in sequence: publishing Woolf’s work in all its genres, scholars are increasingly turning their attention to Woolf’s understanding analyzing Woolf’s reading in a particular genre, studying Woolf’s of a given genre and of generic interaction. Woolf explores a genre by interpretation and adaptation of a genre, and assessing responses expanding its frontier; training our attention on a single genre of Woolf’s in various genres to Woolf’s life and work. work may clarify its terrain, but we must be sensitive and dexterous cartographers. The collection Trespassing Boundaries: Virginia The history of publishing Woolf’s many genres is the history of Woolf’s Short Fiction (2004) exemplifies cartographic skill. The book’s editing Woolf—a wide and lively subject, as the selected papers contributors argue at once that Woolf’s short fiction demands critical of the 2008 Woolf conference attest (eds. McNees and Veglahn). attention and admiration and, as the book’s title suggests, that Woolf’s Leonard Woolf issued many of his late wife’s unpublished essays short fiction defies its genre to challenge the borders between short story and short essays, as well as selections from his wife’s diary and and novel, fact and fiction, and experimental and popular literature.