"What's the Use of Trying to Read Shakespeare?": Modes of Memory in Virginia Woolf's Fiction and Essays

<p>This dissertation maps the relationship between Virginia Woolf’s fiction and essays, and William Shakespeare’s person and plays. I argue that Woolf’s writing is intended as an interactive practice of cultural memory, challenging her readers to become responders and to engage critically with the canon. I further argue that Woolf offers herself as inheritor of a literary practice that actively seeks to shape the values and social ideology of the time. The introduction defines three modes of memory operating in Woolf’s work: memory as opiate; memory as political instrument; and memory as dialectic. The first chapter shows the cultural memory of Shakespeare in Woolf’s time as both opiate and instrument, and traces Woolf’s reaction against such reduction in “A Room of One’s Own.” The second chapter examines Woolf’s use of direct allusion and quotation in her early novels, culminating with her masterful use of the dialectic memory of Shakespeare to critique the British Empire in <em>Mrs. Dalloway</em>. The third chapter examines <em>The Years</em> and <em>Three Guineas</em> as Woolf’s effort to engage with the memorial project of a Shakespearean history play. Finally, the last chapter considers Woolf’s masterpiece, <em>The Waves</em>, as her own retelling of <em>Hamlet</em>, an elegy for an empire that she knows must fall, and an effort to define the succeeding narrative.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Bloom, Sara Remedios

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Carrie Hintz

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Mario DiGangi
• Rebecca Mlynarczyk

• Children's and Young Adult Literature
• English Language and Literature
• Literature in English, British Isles
• Shakespeare
• Woolf
• Modernism
• Memory

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1584

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-2566