Strange cries and ancient songs: Woolf’s Greek and the politics of intelligibility

Kolocotroni, V. (2012) Strange cries and ancient songs: Woolf’s Greek and the politics of intelligibility. In: Randall, B. and Goldman, J. (eds.) Virginia Woolf in Context. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9781107003613

Abstract

As a young woman and aspiring writer, Woolf was particularly irked by her exclusion from formal training in the classics, and especially Greek, a language and a literature in which, she would later argue, 'the stable, the permanent, the original human being is to be found'. Yet Woolf¹s knowledge of classical Greek is remarkable. It features prominently amongst her earliest intellectual and emotional experiences and marks her writing as it develops into a a coded, personal and political idiom. Informed by theories of ritual, honed by ambitious exercises in translation and inflected by an idiosyncratic blend of poetry and polemics, Woolf's classicism is pervasive, subtle and central to any rigorous analysis of her craft.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Kolocotroni, Dr Vassiliki
• Authors: Kolocotroni, V.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISBN: 9781107003613

Related URLs

• University of Glasgow Library Catalogue