Imagining Virginia Woolf
ISBN: 9781400830046
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Authors and readers.; Personality in literature.; Authorship; Authors English; Authors English;

Taking an approach that combines biography and literary criticism to draw out an abstract of the author's life and personae, independent of historical fact, Princeton English professor DiBatistta (Fast-Talking Dames) pieces together a portrait of Virginia Woolf as experienced by readers. Taking one of modern writing's most famous authors, DiBatistta examines the "figment of the author" that coalesces through the author's presence in her own writings, and how readers get to know this representative Woolf. The personae DiBatttista identifies and examines are the Author, the Critic, the World Writer, the Adventurer and the youthful Sibyl of the Drawing Room. For general fans of literary criticism or of Woolf's writing in particular, DiBattista's experiment will offer an intriguing perspective on Woolf's relationship to her art and her audience, but casual readers will find it frustratingly cryptic; it doesn't help that Woolf herself is an author who elicits extreme reactions, further limiting the work's appeal. (Jan.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Maria DiBattista is professor of English and comparative literature at Princeton University. Her books include Virginia Woolf's Major Novels and Fast-Talking Dames .

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