Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere [Hardcover]

This 2003 book relates Woolf's literary reviews and essays to early twentieth-century debates about the value of 'highbrow' culture.Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere relates Woolf's literary reviews and essays to early twentieth-century debates about the value of 'highbrow' culture, the methods of instruction in universities and adult education, and the importance of an educated public for the realization of democratic goals. Combining a wealth of historical detail with a penetrating analysis of Woolf's essays, this study will alter our views of Woolf, of modernism, and of intellectual work.Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere relates Woolf's literary reviews and essays to early twentieth-century debates about the value of 'highbrow' culture, the methods of instruction in universities and adult education, and the importance of an educated public for the realization of democratic goals. Combining a wealth of historical detail with a penetrating analysis of Woolf's essays, this study will alter our views of Woolf, of modernism, and of intellectual work.Melba Cuddy-Keane relates Woolf's literary reviews and essays to early twentieth-century debates about the value of highbrow culture; the methods of instruction in universities and adult education; and the importance of an educated public for the realization of democratic goals. Combining a wealth of historical detail with a penetrating analysis of Woolf's essays, this study will alter our views of Woolf, modernism, and intellectual endeavor.Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction: a wider sphere; Part I. Cultural Contexts: 1. Democratic highbrow: Woolf and the classless intellectual; 2. Woolf, English studies and the making of the (new) common reader; Part II. Critical Practice: 3. Woolf and the theory and pedagogy of reading; Postscript: intellectual work today; Notes; Bibliography; Index. I enthusiastically recommend the book to all readers, common and academic.l3W