WRITING WITH A PAINTER’S MIND: VIRGINIA WOOLF’S FICTION AND AESTYETICS

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to call upon a sophisticated understanding of Virginia Woolf’s work in terms of philosophically inflected aesthetics. The paper is divided into three sec-tions. Section I, “Bloomsbury and Formalism,” discusses the Bloomsbury’s concept of “form” as elaborated in the aesthetic theory of Clive Bell and Roger Fry by tracing back to Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgement. Section II, “Formalist Aes-thetics, Woolf and Feminism,” attempts to build up a theoretical framework through exploring Fry’s postimpressionism, Merleau-Ponty and Lacan’s discussion of Ce-zanne’s painting and the dynamic meaning of the seeing. Section III, “Woolf’s Fic-tion and Aesthetics,” analyzes Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and To the Lighthouse in terms of aesthetic elements, “form,” “reality,” and “vision.” The fragmentation of plot in Jacob’s Room and the unveiling of the “vision” in To the Lighthouse are read along-side the aesthetic theory discussed above. The paper concludes that reading Woolf’s fiction in light of formalist aesthetics opens her texts up to new territory; yet, the wider implication remains to be explored.

Key words: form, reality, vision, aesthetics, Woolf