Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia
In ‘America, Which I Have Have Never Seen’ (1938), Virginia Woolf imagines America as a global community condensing the cultures of several nations. Questioning existing utopian and dystopian American constructs of the time, her overtly fictional mock-utopia starts with an allegorical process of sub...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2015-03-01
|
| Series: | Études Britanniques Contemporaines |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/2239 |
| _version_ | 1818160229451300864 |
|---|---|
| author | Caroline Pollentier |
| author_facet | Caroline Pollentier |
| author_sort | Caroline Pollentier |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In ‘America, Which I Have Have Never Seen’ (1938), Virginia Woolf imagines America as a global community condensing the cultures of several nations. Questioning existing utopian and dystopian American constructs of the time, her overtly fictional mock-utopia starts with an allegorical process of substitution—the paradigmatic substituting of America for the ‘cosmopolitan world of today’—, which gives way to a metonymic dynamics of juxtaposition, leading to the ‘combination and collaboration of all cultures’. At a time when the interwar intergovernmental project of the League of Nations had come to be seen as a utopian failure, Woolf rooted the possibility of intercultural contact in an open-ended politics of form, foregrounding a capacity to rethink the historical present through global tropes. In seeking to understand Woolf’s idea of global form—to rephrase Joseph Frank’s title—, this close reading interprets the interconnectedness of allegory and collage, and the bond they establish between undecidability and syncretism, as part of resistance to hermeneutic, rather than geographic, totality. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-11T15:58:33Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-3ac7ac5bbc0d4604ab7e829e60d2a73e |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1168-4917 2271-5444 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-11T15:58:33Z |
| publishDate | 2015-03-01 |
| publisher | Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Études Britanniques Contemporaines |
| spelling | doaj.art-3ac7ac5bbc0d4604ab7e829e60d2a73e2022-12-22T00:59:22ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeÉtudes Britanniques Contemporaines1168-49172271-54442015-03-014810.4000/ebc.2239Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American UtopiaCaroline PollentierIn ‘America, Which I Have Have Never Seen’ (1938), Virginia Woolf imagines America as a global community condensing the cultures of several nations. Questioning existing utopian and dystopian American constructs of the time, her overtly fictional mock-utopia starts with an allegorical process of substitution—the paradigmatic substituting of America for the ‘cosmopolitan world of today’—, which gives way to a metonymic dynamics of juxtaposition, leading to the ‘combination and collaboration of all cultures’. At a time when the interwar intergovernmental project of the League of Nations had come to be seen as a utopian failure, Woolf rooted the possibility of intercultural contact in an open-ended politics of form, foregrounding a capacity to rethink the historical present through global tropes. In seeking to understand Woolf’s idea of global form—to rephrase Joseph Frank’s title—, this close reading interprets the interconnectedness of allegory and collage, and the bond they establish between undecidability and syncretism, as part of resistance to hermeneutic, rather than geographic, totality.http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/2239Woolf (Virginia)the globalutopiaallegorycollagemetonymy |
| spellingShingle | Caroline Pollentier Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia Études Britanniques Contemporaines Woolf (Virginia) the global utopia allegory collage metonymy |
| title | Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia |
| title_full | Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia |
| title_fullStr | Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia |
| title_full_unstemmed | Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia |
| title_short | Global Forms: Allegory, Collage, and Virginia Woolf’s American Utopia |
| title_sort | global forms allegory collage and virginia woolf s american utopia |
| topic | Woolf (Virginia) the global utopia allegory collage metonymy |
| url | http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/2239 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT carolinepollentier globalformsallegorycollageandvirginiawoolfsamericanutopia |