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Archive for the ‘Anne Fernald’ Category

NYPL hosts Woolf lecture festival

Posted in Anne Fernald, Berg Collection, events, tagged on Tuesday 7 September 2010| Leave a Comment »

The New York Public Library is celebrating Virginia Woolf with a three-day festival of lectures in October. They are free and open to the public.

Here is the schedule:

  • Oct. 19, 4 p.m. – Jean Mills, “Goddesses and Ghosts: Virginia Woolf and Jane Ellen Harrison In Conversation”
  • Oct. 20, 4 p.m. – Isaac Gerwirtz, “When Is a Printed Book as Good as a Manuscript?: The Proof Copy of A Room of One’s Own“
  • Oct. 21, 4 p.m. – Anne Fernald, “On Traffic Lights and Full Stops: Editing Mrs. Dalloway

Mills and Fernald are scholars in residence at the New York Public Library’s Wertheim Study. Gerwirtz is curator of the library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

All three lectures will be held in the South Court Auditorium of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

The New York Public Library maintains two study centers in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building: the Frederick Lewis Allen Room and the Wertheim Study. Both are for qualified scholars needing intensive and long-term use of the collections of the library.

For more information, contact researchstudyrooms@nypl.org.

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Orlando makes NY stage debut

Posted in Anne Fernald, Mark Hussey, Orlando, performance, tagged on Sunday 5 September 2010| 2 Comments »

Sarah Ruhl‘s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando will premiere in New York this month. And two Woolf scholars will moderate question and answer sessions after two of the performances.

Mark Hussey will answer questions on Oct. 2. Anne Fernald will do the same on Oct. 16.

Previews start on Wednesday, Sept. 8, and the play opens Sept. 23 at the Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street. It runs through Oct. 17.

Call 212-352-3101 or visit theatremania.com for details.

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Musings about Woolf on Bloomsday

Posted in Anne Fernald, Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf and Joyce, tagged on Wednesday 16 June 2010| 2 Comments »

Today is Bloomsday, when James Joyce fans worldwide celebrate the day on which he set his groundbreaking novel Ulysses.

It is a novel often compared to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which is also set on a single day in June, and which Woolf wrote after reading Ulysses.

Such a comparison appeared today in the online version of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and it got me to thinking. Was Woolf setting up a subtle pun when she began her novel set in June with the famous line: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”?

After all, Joyce’s main character is Leopold Bloom, and in the first sentence of the novel, Woolf’s main character mentions flowers — aka blooms —  and asserts that she will acquire them independently, without help from anyone else.

Just a thought.

Now here is another: Apple has lifted its censorship of the Ulysses Seen iPad app just in time for Bloomsday celebrations. Apple, it seems, censored the app of the graphic novel, which is a takeoff on Joyce’s, because it included partial nudity.

Today Apple saw the error of its prudish ways and permitted distribution of the original version of the popular comic. At the same time, it gave the go-ahead to an app of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I don’t what problem Apple found with that one.

Oh, and read this interview on Maitresse in honor of the day as well. Thanks to Anne Fernald of Fernham for the tip.

Happy Bloomsday 2010. Read more about Woolf and Joyce.

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Heroism, the effects of war and intertextuality in Mrs. Dalloway

Posted in Anne Fernald, Mrs. Dalloway, tagged , , on Monday 31 May 2010| 3 Comments »

 As a supplement to my previous post about intertextuality and geographical citation in Mrs. Dalloway, how intertextuality is used to portray heroism and the rippling aftereffects of war in Mrs. Dalloway needs to be briefly given further examination. In particular, the relationship between Clarissa and Septimus shall be looked at further.

In Greatness Engendered: George Eliot & Virginia Woolf, Alison Booth argues that Woolf believed women have access to a “secret form of heroism” related to epic life.  Clarissa is, Booth continues, a: “living poem (who) influences moments of deeper communion because (she) is not a great man but many women to many people.  (She) may even extend (her) spirit to the suffering common man, as Woolf speculates in linking Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith (163). 

Suzette Henke argues that Clarissa “embodies the feminine capacity to create, preserve, and sanctify life” (128). Molly Hoff also compares Clarissa to Helen of Troy, noting that Sally Seton at one point commands Peter to take Clarissa away (196). 

Septimus also has some connection to heroes of the epics.  The broken soldier simulates Achilles in the Iliad when he has no taste for food.  In book nine, Achilles also denies himself sustenance to mourn his friends who have died in battle.  In her book Virginia Woolf & The Androgynous Vision, Nancy Topping Bazin also argues that Clarissa and Septimus are linked by Aristotle’s unities of time, place, and action by outside influences like the motor car, airplane, and striking of Big Ben.  Anne Fernald recently pointed out that Septimus’ doctor, arriving at the party late, is the one who breaks the news that Septimus has died.

According to Bazin, Woolf is modifying a technique she got from Joseph Conrad of “representing in different characters the selves of which a total self might be composed” (27).  Woolf discusses this further in Mr. Conrad: A Conversation.

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New York readers can meet for Woolf book talk

Posted in 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Anne Fernald, books, tagged , , , on Tuesday 31 March 2009| Leave a Comment »

Common readers in New York City may be interested in joining a Virginia Woolf reading group this spring on the theme of “Woolf and the City.”

Anne Fernald will lead the group, which will meet for four Monday sessions: April 6, April 20, May 4 and May 22. Each session will meet from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

According to Anne, the group will discuss four of Woolf’s “city novels” in preparation for the upcoming 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, whose theme is “Woolf and the City.”  The novels under discussion include Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, Flush and The Years.

“I’m very honored and excited to be leading this group, and I expect it will be a really fun way for New York Woolfians to talk about Woolf’s fiction with each other,” Anne wrote in an e-mail to the VW Listserv.

Meetings will be held at the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, 17 W. 47th St., between Fifth and Madison avenues.

The cost is $65 for non-members and $50 for members. You can sign up for the group here and find out more about membership in the Mercantile Library here.

Anne Fernald is the author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader and is an associate professor of English at Fordham University, the host for this year’s Woolf conference.

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