For many Woolfians, Orlando is one of our most-loved, rather than most-loathed, of Woolf’s novels. Despite what some modern day cranky critics say.
Some lovers of Orlando posted their responses to critics who recently panned the novel.
Meanwhile, a query posted on the VW Listserv elicited a number of scholarly references regarding Sally Potter‘s film adaptation of the novel.
Among them were these from Gulshan Taneja of the University of Delhi’s English department and editor of In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism:
- Peter Naccarato, “Straightening Woolf’s Queer Text: Sally Potter’s Orlando.” In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism, 14.2 (September 2005): 107-20. Taneja says this was a special issue devoted to Orlando.
- Alison Graham-Bertolini, in an appendix to her article, “The ‘Becoming’ of Orlando: The Deleuzian Perspective,” includes a discussion of the Potter film. It can be found in In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism 14.2 (September 2005): 153-165.
- Potter’s “Notes on the Adaptation of the Book Orlando” from Professor Rose Norman’s Web site.
Here are a few more Orlando resources, scholarly or not, that you can find online:
- Orlando the Film: Bibliography posted by Dr. Norman.
- “Reading Readers in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography” by Kathryn N. Benzel. Get it here.
- “Gypsies and Lesbian Desire: Vita Sackville-West, Violet Trefusis, and Virginia Woolf” by Kirstie Blair. Click here.
- “Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: The Book as Critic” by Kelly Tetterton. Go here.
- “An off-beat adaptation: Orlando” by Timotheos Roussos. Find it here.
- A common reader’s self-described online “shrine” to the Potter film.
- The movie trailer.
[…] One of our texts was Briane Fagan’s The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850. In it, he describes the frost fairs held on the River Thames during the years of the Little Ice Age. In a flash, I thought of Woolf’s descriptions of Orlando and Sasha skating feverishly across the Thames in her 1928 novel Orlando. […]
[…] The problem even affects classics written by authors like Virginia Woolf. I am not sure which books by Woolf are affected — Orlando, perhaps? […]
Thanks for the post
[…] Blogging Woolf has a comprehensive look at recent criticism about Orlando. […]
These look like fantastic resources — thanks Paula!!