Virginia Woolf and the Aesthetics of Vision (Buchreihe Der Anglia / Anglia Book)

Now also in Paperback The category of vision is significant for Modernist texts as well as for the unfolding discourse of Modernism itself. Within the general Modernist fascination with the artistic and experimental possibilities of vision and perception this study looks at Virginia Woolf’s novels and her critical writings and examines the relation between visuality and aesthetics. An aesthetics of vision, as this study argues, becomes a productive principle of narrative. The visual is not only pertinent to Woolf’s processes of composition, but her works create a kind of vision that is proper to the text itself – a vision that reflects on the experience of seeing and renegotiates the relation between the reader and the text. The study investigates key dimensions of aesthetic vision. It addresses vision in the context of theories of aesthetic experience and identifies a semantics of seeing. It analyses functions of symbolic materiality in the presentation of boundaries of perception, modes of temporality and poetic potentialities. In exploring the connections between vision and language, it seeks to provide new perspectives for a reassessment of what occurs in Modernism's relation to vision. Acknowledgements Contents List of Abbreviations Introduction Modernism and vision Aesthetic vision and visual culture Woolf studies and vision 1 Aesthetic Vision and Experience 1.1 The semantics of seeing in Woolf’s essays 1.2 Immediacy and abstraction in The Voyage Out 1.3 The transformation of vision: To the Lighthouse and the immanence of art 1.3.1 Immanence and ideal in Woolf’s reading of Platonism 1.3.2 The dynamics of the image in To the Lighthouse 1.3.3 Light, love and perfection: Platonic eros and the dynamics of narrative in To the Lighthouse 2 Modalities of the Gaze: Windows, Mirrors, and the Veil 2.1 The window and the novel as narrative space 2.1.1 The mediated gaze in The Voyage Out 2.1.2 The multiplicity of symbolic form in Jacob’s Room 2.1.3 The dialectics of perspective: windows in Mrs. Dalloway 2.2 “The veil of words” and the poetics of the diaphanous 2.2.1 The diaphanous in Modernist aesthetics 2.2.2 Twilight and fog: vague and fading vision 2.2.3 Seeing through tears 2.3 The looking glass and the reflection of difference 2.3.1 Beyond the looking glass: the surface and “the other side of life” 2.3.2 Water and glass in Between the Acts 3 The Temporality of Aesthetic Vision 3.1 Modernist temporalities of the view 3.2 Beginnings: the sketch and the scene 3.3 Jacob’s Room and the space of time 3.4 “Was that the end?” – Between the Acts and the paradox of vision in time 3.4.1 Vision and silence 3.4.2 The rhythm of vision in time 4 The Poetry of Aesthetic Vision in The Waves 4.1 Visibility and form in the Interludes 4.2 The “little language” and the private view Conclusion Bibliography Texts and Editions Secondary Sources

The category of vision is significant for Modernist texts as well as for the unfolding discourse of Modernism itself. Within the general Modernist fascination with the artistic and experimental possibilities of vision and perception this study looks at Virginia Woolf’s novels and her critical writings and examines the relation between visuality and aesthetics.

An aesthetics of vision, as this study argues, becomes a productive principle of narrative. The visual is not only pertinent to Woolf’s processes of composition, but her works create a kind of vision that is proper to the text itself – a vision that reflects on the experience of seeing and renegotiates the relation between the reader and the text.

The study investigates key dimensions of aesthetic vision. It addresses vision in the context of theories of aesthetic experience and identifies a semantics of seeing. It analyses functions of symbolic materiality in the presentation of boundaries of perception, modes of temporality and poetic potentialities. In exploring the connections between vision and language, it seeks to provide new perspectives for a reassessment of what occurs in Modernism's relation to vision.

The Modernist fascination with the visual is not only palpable in the development of media and the visual arts, but it becomes a central concern in literature. Modernist texts, particularly the works of Virginia Woolf, turn towards vision to explore new ways of seeing and aesthetic experience. Her novels experiment with phenomena of vision that not merely reflect on modes of perception but create aesthetic vision as a function of the text. Claudia Olk, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Claudia Olk. Habilitation. Includes Bibliographical References.