Творчество писателя второй половины 20-го века ( Вирджинии Вульф)

Table of contents
Introduction
The goal
Tasks:
The biography of an english writer Virginia Woolf
Personal life of Virginia Woolf
As Critic and Essayist
Achievement as Novelist
Bibliography
Summary of some novels
Modern scholarship and interpretations
Last Years and Other Books
Сonclusion
The list of literature
Appendix

Although Percival never speaks through a monologue of his own in The Waves, readers learn about him in detail as the other six characters repeatedly describe and reflect on him throughout the book.
Similar in vein to another modernist work, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood, a Bildungsroman. The Waves obliterates traditional distinctions between prose and poetry, allowing the novel to flow between six not dissimilar interior monologues. The book similarly breaks down traditional boundaries between people, and Woolf herself wrote in her Diary that the six were not meant to be separate «characters» at all, but rather facets of consciousness illuminating a sense of continuity. Even the name «novel» may not accurately describe the complex form of The Waves. Woolf herself called it not a novel but a «playpoem.»
Between the Acts is the final novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1941 shortly after her suicide. It describes the mounting, performance, and audience of a festival play (hence the title) in a small English village just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The English village bonds throughout the play through their differences and similarities.
Modern scholarship and interpretations
Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Louise A. DeSalvo offers treatment of the incestuous sexual abuse Woolf experienced as a young woman in her book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work.
Woolf's fiction is also studied for its insight into shell shock, war, class, and modern British society. Her best-known nonfiction works, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938), examine the difficulties female writers and intellectuals faced in an era when men held disproportionate legal and economic power, and the future of women in education and society.
Irene Coates's book Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf takes the position that Leonard Woolf's treatment of his wife encouraged her ill health and ultimately was responsible for her death. The position, which is not accepted by Leonard's family, is extensively researched and fills in some of the gaps in the traditional account of Virginia Woolf's life. In contrast, Victoria Glendinning's book Leonard Woolf: A Biography, argues that Leonard Woolf was very supportive of his wife, remarkably so in view of her «corrosive contempt» for his Jewish origins.[ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/books/review/Messud.t.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews&oref=slogin]
The first biography of Virginia Woolf was published in 1972 by her nephew, Quentin Bell.
In 1989 Louise Desalvo published the book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work.
In 1992, Thomas Caramagno published the book The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic-Depressive Illness.
Hermione Lee's 1996 biography Virginia Woolf provides a thorough and authoritative examination of Woolf's life and work.
In 2001 Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska edited The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Julia Briggs's Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, published in 2005, is the most recent examination of Woolf's life. It focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life. Thomas Szasz's book My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf (ISBN 0-7658-0321-6) was published in 2006.
Last Years and Other Books
Virginia Woolf was the author of about 15 books, the last, A Writer's Diary, posthumously published in 1953. Her death by drowning in Lewes, Sussex, on March 28, 1941, has often been regarded as a suicide brought on by the unbearable strains of life during World War II. The true explanation seems to be that she had felt symptoms of a recurrence of a mental breakdown and feared that it would be permanent.
Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Jacob's Room (1922) constitute Virginia Woolf's major achievement. The Voyage Out (1915) first brought her critical attention. Night and Day (1919) is traditional in method. The short stories of Monday or Tuesday (1921) brought critical praise. In The Waves (1931) she masterfully employed the stream-of-consciousness technique. Other experimental novels include Orlando (1928), The Years (1937), and Between the Acts (1941). Virginia Woolf's championship of woman's rights is reflected in the essays in A Room of One's Own (1929) and in Three Guineas (1938).
In her last note to her husband she wrote:
«I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been » [Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson. New York, Penguin Group. 2000http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/bio/woolf_v.htm]
Conclusion
As you can see, the English novelist, critic, and essayist Virginia Stephen Woolf (1882-1941) ranks as one of England's most distinguished writers. Virginia Woolf was the author of about 15 books. Her works offer a unique perspective on such topics as sexuality, feminism, life and death, madness and sanity, and the disintegration of society. Through her revolutionary writings, she questioned both the nature of reality and the significance of the individual human being in an alienating and dehumanizing world. Virginia Woolf wrote many novels, books sub-titled as «A Biography», non-fiction and autobiography.
The list of literature
Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson. New York, Penguin Group. 2000. electronic version http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/bio/woolf_v.htm
Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 1972, 314 p
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/adeline-virginia-woolf-dlb2/
http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biow3/wool2.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/books/review/Messud.t.html?_r=1&n=Top%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik
http://www.peoples.ru/art/literature/prose/roman/woolf/photo.html
http://www.essayarchive.com/
Appendix
The portrait of Virginia Woolf
[http://www.peoples.ru/art/literature/prose/roman/woolf/photo.html]

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