Traces of war in Virginia Woolf's Night and Day

Katherine Mansfield's review of Virginia Woolf's Night and Day (1919) has dominated criticism of the novel and contributed to its critical neglect, but Mansfield's belief that the novel ignores the First World War has never been challenged. The present essay identifies the novel'...

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Tác giả chính: Whitworth, M
Định dạng: Journal article
Ngôn ngữ:English
Được phát hành: Edinburgh University Press 2021
Miêu tả
Tóm tắt:Katherine Mansfield's review of Virginia Woolf's Night and Day (1919) has dominated criticism of the novel and contributed to its critical neglect, but Mansfield's belief that the novel ignores the First World War has never been challenged. The present essay identifies the novel's oblique references to the war and to combat. It considers the novel's status as a historical novel: its awareness that the pre-war era is irretrievably lost, and its creation of situational ironies for its characters. It considers the themes of isolation, insulation, and near-obliviousness, and the awareness of sounds at the edge of consciousness, as symptomatic of the novel's war-time moment.