A Poetics of Postmodernism and Neomodernism: Rewriting Mrs Dalloway

281 Pages·2015·1.236 MB·English

by  Monica Latham (auth.)

A Poetics of Postmodernism and Neomodernism
Also by Monica Latham
BOOK PRACTICES AND TEXTUAL ITINERARIES 1: Tracing the Contours of
Literary Works (edited with Nathalie C ollé- Bak and David Ten Eyck)
BOOK PRACTICES AND TEXTUAL ITINERARIES 2: Textual Practices in the
Digital Age (edited with Nathalie C ollé- Bak and David Ten Eyck)
BOOK PRACTICES AND TEXTUAL ITINERARIES 3: Contemporary Textual
Aesthetics (edited with Nathalie C ollé- Bak and David Ten Eyck)
BOOK PRACTICES AND TEXTUAL ITINERARIES 4: From Text(s) to Book(s) (edited
with Nathalie C ollé- Bak and David Ten Eyck)
LEFT OUT: Texts and Ur- Texts (edited with Nathalie Collé- Bak and David Ten Eyck)
THE LIVES OF THE BOOK, PAST, PRESENT AND TO COME (edited with Nathalie
Collé- Bak and David Ten Eyck)
A Poetics of Postmodernism
and Neomodernism
Rewriting Mrs Dalloway
Monica Latham
Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France
© Monica Latham 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-49079-7
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First published 2015 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-50440-4 ISBN 978-1-137-49080-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137490803
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To Mike and Anita
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Contents
Introduction: Legacies 1
Rewriting Mrs Dalloway: ‘leaping dolphins’
in the wake of Virginia Woolf 5
Modernism then and now 7
Mapping Dalloway- esque itineraries 12
1 ‘The D ressing- rooms, the Workshops, the Sculleries,
the Bubbling Cauldrons’ 16
Digging veins of gold 19
The Dalloway- esque ‘queer’ and ‘masterful’ design:
digging caves and building tunnels 29
‘A plenitude of Dallowayisms’ 46
Conclusion 58
2 Ventriloquists: Between Debt and Homage 62
The Hours: ‘lend me your characters’ 62
‘Mr Clarissa Dalloway’ 76
Conclusion 92
3 Parodic Games: Textual Assassinations and
Canonical Resurrection 99
‘Mrs Dalloway’: a flash travesty/caricature 101
‘Mrs Dalloway’: making and serving postmodernist
literary finger food 113
The old lady with the speaking trumpet:
a ghost from the past 118
Conclusion 125
4 Virginia Woolf’s Neomodernist Heirs: Nostalgic Innovators 129
A male D alloway- esque experience 131
On or about 9/11 human nature changed:
neomodernist glocal novels 137
From the library shelf to the bedside table 156
Conclusion 162
5 The Artful Ornament of Ordinariness 167
Variations on Mrs Dalloway 167
The unremarkable ‘trivial, fantastic, evanescent’ 184
vii
viii Contents
Hotel World: Woolf at the door 195
Conclusion 206
Conclusion: New Kids on the Virginia Woolf Block 208
Notes 214
Bibliography 250
Index 264
Introduction: Legacies
The study of the various rewritings spawned by Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs Dalloway is to be found at the confluence of three main ideas in
cultural trends and literary theory: first, the public’s unrelenting, ever
growing cult of the impressive, ubiquitous figure of Virginia Woolf, who
has become a major literary icon and a cultural commodity; second, a
renewed interest in her work and particularly in Mrs Dalloway (1925),
one of her best- known, most read and studied novels, which continues
to influence and inspire generations of readers and writers; and lastly,
the general upsurge of artistic rewritings and reappropriations in our
postmodern era of ‘cloning and recycling’ (Moraru, Rewriting 21).
Since her tragic death in 1941, Virginia Woolf has accumulated a solid
reputation as an ‘icon, celebrity, star’ (Stimpson xi) in Anglo- American
popular culture and intellectual media through a ‘continuing stream
of verbal and visual representations’ (Silver, ‘Virginia Woolf Icon’
392). One of her most admiring legatees and devoted ‘Woolfalators’,1
Michael Cunningham, the author of The Hours, who himself drew
inspiration from Woolf’s life and work, has thus stated in an interview:
‘I don’t think there’s anyone who’s inspired this level of devotion and
fascination and adulation’ (Spring 77); ‘There aren’t many figures in
the twentieth century, or ever, really, who have inspired this particu-
lar kind of ardent, hair- splitting devotion’ (79). The proliferation of
representations of Virginia Woolf ‘has transformed the writer into a
powerful and powerfully contested cultural icon, whose name, face,2
and authority are persistently claimed or disclaimed in debates about
art, politics, sexuality, gender, class, the “canon”, fashion, feminism,
race, and anger’ (Silver, Virginia Woolf Icon 3). ‘An icon and a beacon for
most of a century’ (Baker A 19),3 Woolf has ‘acquired an iconicity that
exists independently of her academic standing or literary reputation’
1