Creator:
Contributor:
Gołębiowska, Urszula - red. nauk. ; Kubasiewicz, Mirosława - red. nauk.
Title:
Vita`s modernism: the green Sackville-West
Group publication title:
Subject and Keywords:
anthropocentrism ; homocentrism ; ecocriticism ; feminism and gardening ; garden writing ; modernism ; pastoral
Abstract:
The reservations of Virginia Woolf about Vita Sackville-West`s fiction have long dominated her legacy. What Marina McKay calls the "decisive historicist turn in modernist studies" continues to exclude Vita because she is written off as a reactionary, yet her garden writing challenges pastoral ideals. As a garden writer, she undermines beliefs about women and the natural world. ; Vita was a greek modernist, keen to revise the Victorian image of women and flowers in safe intimacy; "Come into the garden, Maud" gives way to new dignifying of the garden`s resistance. She advocated "violence" in her writing while de-mystifying traditional gardening language. At the same time, she elevates the quasi-mystical nature writing of D. H. Lawrence and his challenge to man`s domination of nature. ; Vita`s Sissinghurst, long assumed to be an aspect of her conservative, aristocratic character, reveals on closer examination the trouble with privilege. Study of her garden writing also leads to a fresk reading of her novel "All Passion Spent" where she challenges human claims to mastery over the vital experience of the natural world.
Publisher:
Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego
Date:
Resource Type:
Format:
Pages:
Source:
Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego: Seria Scripta Humana, tom 14