Virginia Woolf's Rooms and the Spaces of Modernity (Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies)

This book provides a fascinating account of rooms in selected works by Virginia Woolf. Casting them as spaces which are at once material, textual and emotional, the volume shows Woolf’s rooms to be consistently connected to wider geographies of modernity and therefore central to her writing of gender, class, empire and the nation. The discussion moves “in and out of rooms,” from the focus on travel in Woolf’s debut novel, to the archival function of built space and literary heritage in __Night and____Day__, the university as a male space of learning in __Jacob’s Room__, the iconic __A Room of One’s Own__ and its historical readers, interior space as spatial history in __The Years__, and rooms as loci of memory in her unfinished memoir. Zink masterfully shows the spatial formation of rooms to be at the heart of Woolf’s interweaving of the political and the aesthetic, revealing an understanding of space as dynamic and relational. This book provides a fascinating account of rooms in selected works by Virginia Woolf. Casting them as spaces which are at once material, textual and emotional, the volume shows Woolf's rooms to be consistently connected to wider geographies of modernity and therefore central to her writing of gender, class, empire and the nation. The discussion moves "in and out of rooms," from the focus on travel in Woolf's debut novel, to the archival function of built space and literary heritage in Night and Day , the university as a male space of learning in Jacob's Room , the iconic A Room of One's Own and its historical readers, interior space as spatial history in The Years , and rooms as loci of memory in her unfinished memoir. Zink masterfully shows the spatial formation of rooms to be at the heart of Woolf's interweaving of the political and the aesthetic, revealing an understanding of space as dynamic and relational. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction (Suzana Zink)....Pages 1-11 Rereading the Modern (Suzana Zink)....Pages 13-45 Out of Rooms: Imperial Routes and the Impasse of Becoming in The Voyage Out (Suzana Zink)....Pages 47-74 Night and Day: Great Men’s Rooms and Women’s Lives (Suzana Zink)....Pages 75-98 Trespassing: Spaces of Learning in Jacob’s Room (Suzana Zink)....Pages 99-124 The Woman’s Room: A Room of One’s Own and Its Contemporary Readers (Suzana Zink)....Pages 125-151 Writing Spatial History: The Years (Suzana Zink)....Pages 153-183 Rooms of Memory: “A Sketch of the Past” (Suzana Zink)....Pages 185-212 Conclusion (Suzana Zink)....Pages 213-216 Back Matter ....Pages 217-223 Annotation This text provides a fascinating account of rooms in selected works by Virginia Woolf. Casting them as spaces which are at once material, textual and emotional, the volume shows Woolf's rooms to be consistently connected to wider geographies of modernity and therefore central to her writing of gender, class, empire and the nation