Haunting the London Streets: Virginia Woolf’s Urban Travelogues Re-appraised
0
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Woolf’s preoccupation with the interplay between gender, commercialism, and the modern city is exposed in higher relief by her feminist remapping of the city through a discourse of flânerie, which is epitomized in her singular urban travelogues such as ‘Street Haunting’ and The London Scene essays. A fanatical London-adventurer herself, she assumes the persona of the flâneuse in exploring the street of modern London and especially the public sphere of the marketplace, as represented in ‘Oxford Street Tide’. Living and working in the quarter of Bloomsbury, in close proximity to the capital’s famous sites of tourism, entertainment, and mass consumption, Woolf was placed at the heart of urban spectacle. In spite of the lack of critical analysis of this high-profile writer’s interest in such quotidian matters as shopping, fashion and appearance, which would be informed by a hierarchy of value within literary criticism, it seems that they are inextricably intertwined with her quest into more serious-minded topics that revolve around the twin pillars of her literary project: feminism and modernism. Her essays, in particular, suggest this point in one way or another, mirroring her extraordinary susceptibility to such concerns. For Woolf, street sauntering is synonymous with an act of ‘creative mobility’, by which she plays with the notion of shifting identities, rediscovers the urban rarities and splendors, and ultimately pins them down in her literary output. By adopting the identity of a masterly rambler/observer/explorer with an omnipotent gaze, she firmly anchors herself as an active interpreter of urban modernity and viewer of its spectacle. She thus challenges the idea of public space as a male domain, which is central to the classic androcentric discourse of loitering, spectatorship and urban modernity.
Abstract
Woolf’s preoccupation with the interplay between gender, commercialism, and the modern city is exposed in higher relief by her feminist remapping of the city through a discourse of flânerie, which is epitomized in her singular urban travelogues such as ‘Street Haunting’ and The London Scene essays. A fanatical London-adventurer herself, she assumes the persona of the flâneuse in exploring the street of modern London and especially the public sphere of the marketplace, as represented in ‘Oxford Street Tide’. Living and working in the quarter of Bloomsbury, in close proximity to the capital’s famous sites of tourism, entertainment, and mass consumption, Woolf was placed at the heart of urban spectacle. In spite of the lack of critical analysis of this high-profile writer’s interest in such quotidian matters as shopping, fashion and appearance, which would be informed by a hierarchy of value within literary criticism, it seems that they are inextricably intertwined with her quest into more serious-minded topics that revolve around the twin pillars of her literary project: feminism and modernism. Her essays, in particular, suggest this point in one way or another, mirroring her extraordinary susceptibility to such concerns. For Woolf, street sauntering is synonymous with an act of ‘creative mobility’, by which she plays with the notion of shifting identities, rediscovers the urban rarities and splendors, and ultimately pins them down in her literary output. By adopting the identity of a masterly rambler/observer/explorer with an omnipotent gaze, she firmly anchors herself as an active interpreter of urban modernity and viewer of its spectacle. She thus challenges the idea of public space as a male domain, which is central to the classic androcentric discourse of loitering, spectatorship and urban modernity.
참고문헌 (21)
- Benjamin, Walter, "Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism" (1973), Verso
- Berman, Marshall, "All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity" (1983), Verso
- Bowlby, Rachel, "Walking, Women and Writing: Virginia Woolf as Flâneuse in: New Feminist Discourses", pp.26~47 (1992), Routledge
- Caughie, Pamela L., "Virginia Woolf and Post-Modernism: Literature in Quest and Question of Itself" (1991), U of Illinois P
- Certeau, Michel, "The Practice of Everyday Life" (1984), U of California P
- Crossick, Geoffrey, "Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store 1850-1939" (1999), Ashgate
- Daiches, David, "Virginia Woolf’s London in: Literary Landscapes of the British Isles: A Narrative Atlas", pp.69~89 (1979), Paddington
- Harvey, David, "The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change" (1989), Basil Blackwell
- Mumford, Lewis, "The City in History" (1966), Penguin
- Nava, Mica, "Modernity’s Disavowal: Women, the City and the Department Store in: Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of Modernity", pp.38~76 (1996), Routledge
- Rappaport, Erika, "Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End" (2000), Princeton UP
- Snaith, Anna, "Virginia Woolf: Public and Private Negotiations" (2000), Macmillan
- Squire, Susan Merrill, "Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of the City" (1985), U of North Carolina P
- Tiersten, Lisa, "Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Finde-Siècle France" (2001), U of California P.
- Walkowitz, Judith, "City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London" (1992), U of Chicago P.
- Wilson, Elizabeth, "The Invisible Flâneur in: The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women", pp.72~89 (2001), Sage
- Wilson, Elizabeth, "Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity" (2003), I.B. Tauris
- Woolf, Virginia, "The Diary of Virginia Woolf III" (1980), Harcourt
- Woolf, Virginia, "Street Haunting: A London Adventure in: The Crowded Dance of Modern Life: Selected Essays II.", pp.70~81 (1993), Penguin
- Woolf, Virginia, "The Docks of London in: The Crowded Dance of Modern Life II", pp.107~113
- Woolf, Virginia, "Oxford Street Tide in: The Crowded Dance of Modern Life II", pp.113~117