Output list
Book chapter
Woolf and Hopkins on the Revelatory Particular
Published 14/12/2019
Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf, 87 - 107
Virginia Woolf was clearly interested in the life and poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, but almost no one has investigated the thematic connections between them. This chapter suggests that, in spite of her own atheism, Woolf pursued a fruitful engagement with Hopkins’ theological aesthetics, as worked out in his poetry. In particular, her dramatization of individual moments of revelation in Mrs. Dalloway follows the model set forth by Hopkins in his poems and theorized in his prose. Reading her authorial choices next to his reveals how much Woolf relied on Christian views of creation, gift, and transcendent experience.