Virginia Woolf's Greek Tragedy

In Woolf's writings Greece and Greek tragedy in particular shape an exoticized aesthetic space that both emerges from and enables critique of the cosy settings and colonialist conceits of elite (and largely male) British attitudes toward culture and politics. Rather than highlighting Woolf's exclusion from male intellectual purviews, as so many scholars have emphasized, this book urges attention on how her engagements with Greek tragedy both collude with and challenge modernist aesthetics and contemporary politics.

Woolf's encounters with and uses of Greek tragedy fantasize an alternative perceptual capacity that correlates to feminine (and feminist) modes, which are depicted in her writings as alternately defiant and choral. In this scheme, Greek tragedy is something of a dreamland, the mysterious dynamics of which Woolf treats as transcending cultural attitudes that hinge upon imperialist adventuring and violence. As scholars have recognized, especially in recent decades, the exoticizing gestures central to the work of so many modernists have uncomfortable political underpinnings, since they frequently inhabit imperialist and colonialist perspectives while appearing to critique them. Unlike most scholars, Nancy Worman argues that Woolf is no exception, although the feminism and humour that inflects so many "Greek" elements in her work saves it from the worst offenses.

“This welcome volume explores how Woolf's interactions with Greek tragedy contributed to the formation of what Worman (classics and comparative literature, Barnard and Columbia) terms a ‘tragic aesthetics’ in her novels and selected essays, particularly those of the 1920s and 1930s. A specialist in Greek drama, Worman focuses on Woolf's engagement with representations of gender in the tragedies as the author shaped her evolving aesthetics of loss as a modernist and feminist writing in an era of late British imperialism and postwar recovery … Summing Up: Recommended.” – CHOICE

“Nancy Worman offers a feisty feminist account of Virginia Woolf's tragic aesthetics, revolving around “her sense that patriarchy makes tragedies of all women's lives.” With classical expertise and critical sophistication, Worman illuminates how the gendered dynamics of Greek tragedy are played out in Woolf's essays and novels, in the embodiment of fierce tragic heroines like Electra and Antigone and in the interplay of choral voices. This fascinating book teaches us new ways to read Virginia Woolf through Greek tragedy, and Greek tragedy through Virginia Woolf-with a renewed sense of urgency for contemporary readers.” —Yopie Prins, Irene Butter Collegiate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, USA