Romancing the phone: Woolf's first media age
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Peer-reviewed
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Authors
Allen, Edward
Abstract
This essay takes the telephone as its subject, and in doing so responds to David Trotter’s work on interwar communication in 'Literature in the First Media Age' (2013). I focus particularly on the development of Virginia Woolf’s writing – from 'Night and Day' (1919) through 'Jacob’s Room' (1922) to 'The Years' (1937) – noting along the way the extent to which technology and technique speak to one another, sometimes to devastating effect, often at the expense of vocal clarity. Tapping into Woolf’s telephones, I argue, has a number of things to tell us about the texture of her fiction, as well as about her characters’ quality of attention and their urge to get things done at a distance.
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Keywords
English literature, modernist writers, 1900-1999, Woolf, Virginia(1882-1941), 0000 0001 2095 9604, telephone, communication technology, Trotter, David(1951- )
Journal Title
CRITICAL QUARTERLY
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0011-1562
1467-8705
1467-8705
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Publisher
Wiley
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All rights reserved