The Phantom Table Woolf, Fry, Russell and the Epistemology of Modernism [Hardcover]

Major study of Woolf's relationship to Bloomsbury and the aesthetic and philosophical developments of her time.This magisterial study is a major reappraisal of Virginia Woolf's relationship to Bloomsbury and the aesthetic and philosophical developments of her time. Through extensive archival research, Ann Banfield offers the first full analysis of Woolf's engagement with the theories of a remarkable trinity of thinkers: G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Roger Fry.This magisterial study is a major reappraisal of Virginia Woolf's relationship to Bloomsbury and the aesthetic and philosophical developments of her time. Through extensive archival research, Ann Banfield offers the first full analysis of Woolf's engagement with the theories of a remarkable trinity of thinkers: G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Roger Fry.This study is a major reappraisal of Virginia Woolf's relationship to Bloomsbury and the aesthetic and philosophical developments of her time. Through extensive archival research, Ann Banfield offers the first full analysis of Woolf's engagement with the theories of a remarkable trinity of thinkers: G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Roger Fry.List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction: table talk; Part I. Subject and Object and the Nature of Reality: 2. The geometry in the sensible world: Russell's analysis of matter; 3. The world seen without a self: Woolf's analysis of matter; 4. Solus ipse, alone in the universe; 5. The dualism of death; Part II. Principia Aesthetica: 6. Fry's granite and rainbow: post-impressionism and impressionism; 7. How to describe the world seen without a self?; 8. The modern elegy; Notes; Bibliography; Index. Ann Banfield has written a book of great size in every respect. Large in ambition, vast in research, commanding in its control of many difficult texts and many formidable arguments, it will become a major resource not only for Woolf scholarship, but for all those interested in Modernist studies.lãž