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COPYRIGHT 2002 Indiana University, Purdue University of Fort Wayne
Edited by Pamela Caughie. Border Crossings Series, Volume 6. New York: Garland Publishers, 2000. xxxvi + 310 pages.
If the industry of Woolf criticism is considered a barometer for trends in twentieth-century literary criticism, then Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction represents a fresh and intriguing development. At mid-century, scholars explicated Woolf's novels in terms of their messages and literary techniques, while the last few decades have seen an emphasis on identity politics and biographical studies. Recently criticism has taken a turn toward "ruminations on a theme," where an anthology takes up a specific, as-yet-unexplored idea from various angles. Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction incorporates all of this history. This anthology's technological focus is relevant to today's society as well as interesting in its own right. Contributors explore Woolf's work in terms of modernist-era technologies and their political implications.
At first, the question of the current collection seems to be, "What do early-twentieth-century cultural icons Virginia Woolf and Walter Benjamin have in common?" This question arises from the title of the anthology, which slips Woolf's name into the title of Benjamin's famous essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." A closer look at the articles reveals that the backbone of the comparison lies in these figures' common interest in issues of technology, and not in their personalities. The role of technology in Woolf is already a worthy theme to explore regardless of the connection to Benjamin, so the volume's title seems like an unnecessarily vigorous attempt to cash in on Benjamin's current popularity.
The structure of the volume exposes the tension between the apparent goal of connecting Woolf and Benjamin and the actual underlying agenda of exploring technology in Woolf's work and time. After editor Pamela Caughie's general introduction, four sections contain one to five essays each. An introductory/theoretical section, "Intellectuals in the Marketplace: Virginia Woolf and Walter Benjamin," suggests several ways to compare Woolf and Benjamin. The second, eponymous section, "Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," is clearly the heart of this anthology: it contains the most articles, coheres in terms of critical approach, and traces a careful path....
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