A Form for Writing 20th Century Loss: Aesthetics of Absence in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room

Authors

  • Anthony Nuckols Universitat de València

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/452f.2021.25.2

Keywords:

Virginia Woolf | First World War | Mourning | Absence | Partrick Modiano | W. G. Sebald

Abstract

Considered her first modernist novel, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922) would be remembered for its experimental techniques to tell the story of Jacob who died in the First World War. Woolf’s construction of her ultimately unknowable character offers a distinct response to the changing realities of warfare and serves as a literary mode of mourning that seeks not to console, but rather to preserve and transmit absence provoked by the losses of the Great War. Here I offer an analysis of Woolf’s aesthetics of absence, which I contend anticipates later concerns in addressing experiences of mass violence in literature. In particular, I trace parallels in Modiano’s Dora Bruder (1997) and Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001).

Author Biography

Anthony Nuckols, Universitat de València

Departament de filologia anglesa i alemanya

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Published

2021-07-30

How to Cite

Nuckols, A. (2021). A Form for Writing 20th Century Loss: Aesthetics of Absence in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. 452ºF. Revista De Teoría De La Literatura Y Literatura Comparada, (25), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.1344/452f.2021.25.2

Issue

No. 25 (2021): Crisis, Pandemics, and Counter-hegemony: Reading Paradigm Shifts across World Literature

Section

Monograph

License

All contents published in the journal are protected under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. This corresponds to legislation within Spain, and does not allow commercial use of the texts. It is not possible to modify the contents either.

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Comparative Literature magazine 452ºF [ISSN 2013-3294] is a publishing project coordinated by Asociación Cultural 452ºF, and developed by its Editorial board.



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