Overview
- Offers a formidable body of criticism on the subject of Woolf’s London including over 20 maps and detailed discussions of her novels and other works
- Combines the emerging field of literary spatial studies with theories on mobility and geography
- Sheds light on a vastly overlooked scholarly gap in Woolf Studies
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies (GSLS)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This innovative volume employs theoretical tools from the field of literary geography to explore Virginia Woolf’s writing and the ways in which she constructs her human subjects. It follows the routes of characters from The Voyage, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and more as they walk around London, demonstrating how Woolf constructs the characters in her stories in a very politically conscious way. As Larsson argues, none of Woolf’s characters are able to walk just anywhere, at any time in history, or at any time of the day. Time, place, gender, and class form the conditions of life that the characters must accept or challenge.
Featuring an array of detailed maps, Walking Virginia Woolf’s London: An Investigation in Literary Geography brings a fascinating new perspective to Virginia Woolf’s work. It is essential reading for scholars of modernist literature or geocriticism.
Reviews
“A scholarly volume offering thought-provoking readings of Woolf’s novels in pleasantly readable prose, concentrating on characters’ walks through the capital. … readers looking specifically for geocritically inflected criticism of Woolf’s fictional London wanderings are likely to be well satisfied with what they find, as will most general readers, too. … Larson’s readable study shows that a geocritical approach opens up useful, worthwhile and interesting readings of Woolf’s comments on class and sex and place.” (Mary Ellen Foley, Virginia Woolf Bulletin, Issue 60, January, 2019)
“A meticulous and comprehensive addition to studies of Woolf’s walking, Lisbeth Larsson’s book sets out to trace … an inductive survey of the actual walks taken by various characters which uses the tools of literary geography to draw insightful conclusions about Woolf’s political demarcations of London and her critiques of class, patriarchy, and colonialism.” (Elisa Kay Sparks, Woolf Studies Annual, Vol. 25, 2019)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Lisbeth Larsson has been Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg since 2000. Her major publications are in the fields of popular culture, feminism and biography. She edited and contributed to The History of Nordic Women’s Literature. At present she heads the project Swedish Women Online.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Walking Virginia Woolf’s London
Book Subtitle: An Investigation in Literary Geography
Authors: Lisbeth Larsson
Series Title: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55672-7
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 International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-55671-0Published: 18 August 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85722-0Published: 03 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-55672-7Published: 07 August 2017
Series ISSN: 2578-9694
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5188
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 247
Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations
Topics: British and Irish Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, Literary Theory