Strange Intimacies - Affect, Embodiment and Materiality in Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys - by Eret Talviste (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examines the life-affirming and enchanting aspects of Woolf's and Rhys's modernism with feminist, affect and new materialist theories.

Book Synopsis

This book explores how the novels by Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys - To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), Between the Acts (1941), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) - maintain an attachment to and love for life amid disenchanting times of war and social change. Drawing from Woolf's and Rhys's personal writings and fictions, Talviste demonstrates that Woolf and Rhys locate this attachment to life in the moments and atmospheres of 'strange intimacy' - in sensual, affective and oddly intimate moments that function as cracks in the dominant patriarchal and imperial ideologies of Woolf's and Rhys's times. To theorise strange intimacy, this monograph rethinks the feminist works of Hélène Cixous, especially her attention to materiality, affect and embodiment, in the light of contemporary affect studies and new materialism.

Review Quotes

Populated with feeling bodies and exploring sensory joy, this is a book for scholars interested in affective, affirmative approaches to the modernist novel. Supported by insights from feminist, new materialist and posthumanist thought, Talviste's perceptive readings of Woolf and Rhys stage intimate encounters with human strangers and more-than-human strangeness.-- "Derek Ryan, University of Kent"