Virginia Woolf Icon (Women in Culture and Society) - Hardcover

Silver, Brenda R.

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9780226757452: Virginia Woolf Icon (Women in Culture and Society)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226757455 ISBN 13: 9780226757452

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2000

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This is a book about "Virginia Woolf": the face that sells more postcards than any other at Britain's National Portrait Gallery, the name that Edward Albee's play linked with fear, the cultural icon so rich in meanings that it has been used to market everything from the New York Review of Books to Bass Ale. Brenda Silver analyzes Virginia Woolf's surprising visibility in both high and popular culture, showing how her image and authority have been claimed or challenged in debates about art, politics, anger, sexuality, gender, class, the canon, feminism, race, and fashion.

From Virginia Woolf's 1937 appearance on the cover of Time magazine to her current roles in theater, film, and television, Silver traces the often contradictory representations and the responses they provoke, highlighting the recurring motifs that associate Virginia Woolf with fear. By looking more closely at who is afraid and the contexts in which she is perceived to be frightening, Silver illustrates how Virginia Woolf has become the site of conflicts about cultural boundaries and legitimacy that continue to rage today.

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About the Author:

Brenda R. Silver is professor of English at Dartmouth College.

From Library Journal:

In this study, Silver (English, Dartmouth Coll.; Virginia Woolf's Reading Notebooks) examines Woolf as a cultural image who, like Shakespeare, turns up whenever a well-known literary figure is needed to make a point. Woolf, she argues, has become an "icon" evoked in debates on such subjects as art, sexuality, class, and the literary "canon." Her name and face appear on posters, T-shirts, and coffee mugs; in literary works such as Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; and on television shows like Murphy Brown. As an "emblem of deadly female power," Silver maintains, Woolf is often associated, like the mythical Medusa and Sphinx, with fear of feminism, bisexuality, and intellectual women. Dense and filled with long, convoluted sentences and unnecessary detail, this book would have been more effective as a briefer, more focused study. Moreover, much here pertains not to Woolf but to other iconic women (like Marilyn Monroe), obscuring the analysis of Woolf. Of some interest to academic libraries.
-Denise J. Stankovics, Rockville P.L., Vernon, CT
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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