Virginia Woolf and the Modern Sublime ─ The Invisible Tribunal

Reading Virginia Woolf's modernist masterpieces in light of her revisions of romantic intertexts, this book examines how she transforms sublime experience into an experience of imaginative self-forming. Through readings of canonical texts such as A Room of One's Own to the often overlooked On Being Ill, the author argues, these transformative moments displace the modern figure of individual male genius in favor of the democratic invention of female genius. Drawing on the work of theorists and scholars such as Harold Bloom, Perry Meisel, and Jane Goldman, it places such ironic novels as Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves in the revisionary literary and critical tradition extending from the Elizabethans up to the contemporary moment.

Daniel T. O'Hara is Professor of English and Inaugural Mellon Term Professor of Humanities at Temple University, USA.