engleski

Ordinary Minds: Narratives of Modernist Empathy

To describe what the specific subject matter of the (modern) novelist should be Virginia Woolf used the phrase “an ordinary mind on an ordinary day.” Modernist literature still enjoys the reputation (not always undeservedly) of being elitist, high-brow and hermetic, while quite a few of its proponents actually argued for a very different understanding of the function of literature in modern society. This paper will address the question of representing ordinary minds in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, both as an issue of social relations in the changing world of the early 20th century, as well as an issue of the literary representation of subjectivity. In particular, the novel will be discussed for its theme of class empathy, as a continuation of similar social concerns in the Victorian novel. For comparison, I will use Declan Kiberd’s re-reading of Joyce’s Ulysses as a text dealing with, in Kiberd’s phrase, the “art of everyday life.”

modernism, novel, Virginia Woolf, empathy

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