Emily Dalgarno

In Virginia Woolf and the Visible World, Emily Dalgarno examines Woolf’s engagement with notions of the subject and codes of the visible. Dalgarno examines how Woolf’s writing engages with visible and non-visible realms of experience, and draws on ideas from the diverse fields of psychoanalytic theory, classical Greek tragedy, astronomy, photography and photojournalism. The solar eclipse of 1927 marks a dividing line in Woolf’s career, after which she portrayed the visible world in terms of light, and shifted her interest from painting to photography. Dalgarno offers textual analyses of Woolf’s individual works, including To the Lighthouse, The Waves and Three Guineas, arguing for the importance of her ongoing interest in Greek translation. In later chapters, she explores the theory of the subject that emerges from Woolf’s representation of the visible in her autobiography.

Virginia Woolf's rich and imaginative use of language was partly a result of her keen interest in foreign literatures and languages - mainly Greek and French, but also Russian, German and Italian. As a translator she naturally addressed herself both to contemporary standards of translation within the university, but also to readers like herself. In Three Guineas she ranged herself among German scholars who used Antigone to critique European politics of the 1930s. Orlando outwits the censors with a strategy that focuses on Proust's untranslatable word. The Waves and The Years show her looking ahead to the problems of postcolonial society, where translation crosses borders. In this in-depth study of Woolf and European languages and literatures, Emily Dalgarno opens up a rewarding new way of reading her prose.

In Virginia Woolf and the Visible World, Emily Dalgarno examines Woolf's engagement with notions of the subject and codes of the visible. Dalgarno examines how Woolf's writing engages with visible and non-visible realms of experience, and draws on ideas from the diverse fields of psychoanalytic theory, classical Greek tragedy, astronomy, photography and photojournalism. The solar eclipse of 1927 marks a dividing line in Woolf's career, after which she portrayed the visible world in terms of light, and shifted her interest from painting to photography. Dalgarno offers textual analyses of Woolf's individual works, including To the Lighthouse, The Waves and Three Guineas, arguing for the importance of her ongoing interest in Greek translation. In later chapters, she explores the theory of the subject that emerges from Woolf's representation of the visible in her autobiography.