Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf''s modernism can be seen as a mosaic of multiple art forms: painting, film, dance, clothes and textiles. Carolyn Abbs takes this idea further to fill a gap left by previous research in that she argues Virginia Woolf''s writing is a transformation of the nonverbal through language. The nonverbal aspect of art creates the feelings and sensations of the body, a corporeality of the subject with both mobility and spatiality. Abbs draws on the work of Heidegger, Ruthrof, Bakhtin, Kristeva and Deleuze to develop a highly persuasive argument for a politics of the subject that emphasises nonverbal arts. For instance, painting forms a space for the subject that is not merely visual; it involves other senses such as the tactile. The fluidity of cinema causes emotion and mobility of the body; mobility is extended by the kinaesthetic qualities of dance to convey the sensation and rhythm of bodily movement, whereas clothes and textiles create closeness. From such insights, Abbs reveals how Woolf fictionalizes memory as perception to create the feeling of closeness to the body. This book will be of interest to literary theorists, Woolf scholars, and creative writers.