Emma Sutton 
Virginia Woolf and Classical Music 
Politics, Aesthetics, Form

This study is a groundbreaking investigation into the formative influence of music on Virginia Woolf’s writing GBS_insert Preview Button Popup([‘ISBN:9780748637874’, ‘ISBN:9780748637881’]);In this unique study Emma Sutton discusses all of Woolf s novels as well as selected essays and short fiction, offering detailed commentaries on Woolf s numerous allusions to classical repertoire and to composers including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. Sutton explores Woolf s interest in the contested relationship between politics and music, placing her work in a matrix of ideas about music and national identity, class, anti-Semitism, pacifism, sexuality and gender. The study also considers the formal influence of music from fugue to Romantic opera on Woolf s prose and narrative techniques. The analysis of music s role in Woolf s aesthetics and fiction is contextualized in accounts of her musical education, activities as a listener, and friendships with musicians; and the study outlines the relationship between her musicalized work and that of contemporaries including Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Mansfield and Eliot.Key Features:Analysis of music, national identity and war in The Voyage Out, Jacob s Room and Mrs Dalloway Close reading of Wagner s influence on the plot and narrative techniques of The Voyage Out Analysis of music and philo- and anti-Semitism in The Years Innovative reading of the fugal structure of Mrs Dalloway Listen to an interview with Emma Sutton on ABC’s RN here