Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: From Michel de Montaigne to the New Media: Reading Virginia Woolf in the Twenty-First Century
- Part I ‘Theorising’ Reading, ‘Theorising’ Language
- 1 Those Soul Mates: Virginia Woolf and Michel de Montaigne
- 2 Changing Titles/Transforming Texts?
- Part II The Politics of Writing
- Part III Dialogue and Dissent
- Conclusion: ‘Thinking Against the Current’
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Those Soul Mates: Virginia Woolf and Michel de Montaigne
from Part I - ‘Theorising’ Reading, ‘Theorising’ Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: From Michel de Montaigne to the New Media: Reading Virginia Woolf in the Twenty-First Century
- Part I ‘Theorising’ Reading, ‘Theorising’ Language
- 1 Those Soul Mates: Virginia Woolf and Michel de Montaigne
- 2 Changing Titles/Transforming Texts?
- Part II The Politics of Writing
- Part III Dialogue and Dissent
- Conclusion: ‘Thinking Against the Current’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Reading is an intimate act, perhaps more intimate than any other human act. I say that because of the prolonged (or intense) exposure of one mind to another that is involved in it, and because it is the level of mind at which feelings and hopes are dealt in by consciousness and words. … If the reader is not at risk, he is not reading. And if the writer is not at risk, he is not writing.
Harold Brodkey, ‘Reading is the Most Dangerous Game’, The New York Times Book ReviewRisk. Danger. These are certainly not the words that come to mind when thinking about reading and writing, nor the pangs of anxiety one tends to associate with these words. But the writings of the late sixteenth-century Michel de Montaigne and the early twentieth-century Virginia Woolf express and enact the significance of the intimacy between reader and writer – between reader and text. Both were intensely interested in what ensues when one brings one's self, in all its mystery and mutability, to meet another self, as it is embodied in their carefully chosen words and punctuation, deftly arranged on the page. What is the risk of following a mind moving along varying trajectories, venturing to places unknown? It suggests a voyage for both writer and reader, taking both to uncharted territories. The words they encounter dredge up unconscious scenarios, produce physiological responses, and provoke many feelings that simply defy anticipation or control.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Language , pp. 17 - 39Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010