Nouvelle traduction par Jean-Yves Cotté de l'essai qui bouleversa toute la condition féminine à l'échelle de son siècle, et qui rassemble une série de conférences sur le thème de la fiction et des femmes que Virginia Woolf donna en 1928 à l'université de Cambridge.
« Une femme doit avoir de l'argent et un lieu à elle si elle veut écrire de la fiction. » À la manière d'un roman, et s'appuyant sur l'histoire littéraire, Virginia Woolf retrace le cheminement qui l'a conduite vers cette célèbre thèse, qui reste incontournable de nos jours. Chef-d'oeuvre de la littérature féministe, ce texte met en perspective la question de l'écriture et des femmes au sein de la littérature contemporaine.
« J'aime souvent les femmes. J'aime leur anticonformisme. J'aime leur complétude. J'aime leur anonymat. » Virginia Woolf (Adeline Virginia Alexandra Stephen 25 janvier 1882 - 28 mars 1941) est une femme de lettres anglaise, l'un des principaux auteurs modernistes du XXe siècle, et une féministe. Dans l'entre-deux-guerres, elle est une figure marquante de la société littéraire londonienne et un membre central du Bloomsbury Group, qui réunit des écrivains, artistes et philosophes anglais. Les romans Mrs Dalloway (1925), La Promenade au phare (1927) et Orlando (1928), ainsi que l'essai Une chambre à soi (1929) demeurent parmi ses écrits les plus célèbres.
Tôt le matin, tard le soir, Clarissa Dalloway se surprend à écouter le clocher de Big Ben. Entre les deux carillons, une journée de printemps, une promenade en ville, le flux des états d'âme et le long monologue d'une conscience.
Clarissa tente de « sauver cette partie de la vie, la seule précieuse, ce centre, ce ravissement, que les hommes laissent échapper, cette joie prodigieuse qui pourrait être nôtre ». Et pourtant résonne déjà dans ce livre, le plus transparent peut-être de l'oeuvre de Virginia Woolf, comme la fêlure de l'angoisse ou le vertige du suicide.
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''The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.'' Written for her lover Vita Sackville-West, ''Orlando'' is Woolf''s playfully subversive take on a biography, here tracing the fantastical life of Orlando. As the novel spans centuries and continents, gender and identity, we follow Orlando''s adventures in love - from being a lord in the Elizabethan court to a lady in 1920s London.
First published in 1928, this tale of unrivalled imagination and wit quickly became the most famous work of women''s fiction. Sexuality, destiny, independence and desire - all come to the fore in this highly influential novel that heralded a new era in women''s writing.
Trois guinées a été publié pour la première fois en France par les éditions Des femmes, en 1977. Un acte historique, une levée de censure, l'un des symboles de la raison d'être de cette maison d'éditions: ce texte, dénonciation vigoureuse de la «tyrannie patriarcale », n'avait jamais été publié en français depuis sa parution en Angleterre en 1938. La traduction de Viviane Forrester fait honneur à l'écriture de la grande romancière, qui se mue ici en essayiste, éblouissante d'intelligence et d'humour. Ecrit alors que menaçait la Seconde guerre mondiale, dont Virginia Woolf ressentait particulièrement les dangers, Trois guinées vibre d'une colère étonnamment clairvoyante, qui interroge encore les femmes, et donc les hommes de notre temps, après plus de 40 ans de mouvements de libération des femmes.
Virginia Woolf La Promenade au phare Fera-t-il beau demain pour la promenade au phare ? Cette question plane sur la famille réunie un soir de mi-septembre dans la grande maison de vacances des îles Hébrides.
Tout au long du livre s'insinue la pulsation de la mer. L'eau entrave les pensées. La vie se déverse et la mort surprend. Les années passent. La maison est abandonnée. Demeurent les petits miracles quotidiens, ces « allumettes inopinément frottées dans le noir ». Ce sont eux qui donnent un sens aux choses, un mouvement à la vie.
Le chef d'oeuvre de Virginia Woolf ? Sûrement son récit le plus étrange, le plus délicat, le plus hanté pas la mort, comme une absence qui obsède.
Qui est Jacob ? L'enfant qui, un jour, ramasse un crâne de mouton séché par le vent le long des rochers, l'étudiant nonchalant de Cambridge ou bien l'helléniste à la recherche de la sagesse ?...
Tout converge vers la disparition de Jacob. Dès les premières pages, on devine en sourdine le leitmotiv de la mort. Une tristesse confuse, irraisonnée, se glisse sous les pas du jeune homme. Et pourtant il ne se passe presque jamais rien. Quelques images d'un adolescent qui collectionne les papillons, parcours au galop les plaines de l'Essex, se baigne nu dans la rivière, lit Spinoza et Dickens, part en Grèce, fume la pipe et séduit les femmes et les jeunes filles. Bref, le portrait d'un être insouciant et cependant menacé.
Jacob ne reviendra pas de la guerre. Là est le véritable dénouement à peine suggéré. Jacob insaisissable nous échappe à jamais.
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Clarissa Dalloway is a woman of high-society - vivacious, hospitable and sociable on the surface, yet underneath troubled and dissatisfied with her life in post-war Britain. This disillusionment is an emotion that bubbles under the surface of all of Woolf''s characters in Mrs Dalloway.
Centred around one day in June where Clarissa is preparing for and holding a party, her interior monologue mingles with those of the other central characters in a stream of consciousness, entwining, yet never actually overriding the pervading sense of isolation that haunts each person.
One of Virginia Woolf''s most accomplished novels, Mrs Dalloway is widely regarded as one of the most revolutionary works of the 20th century in its style and the themes that it tackles. The sense that Clarissa has married the wrong person, her past love for another female friend and the death of an intended party guest all serve to amplify this stultifying existence.
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Au phare, c'est cette destination vers laquelle se tend et se déploie tout le roman, un serment en suspens, à flux tendu au-dessus des profondeurs abyssales de la conscience des personnages. La promesse d'une promenade scelle l'alliance de Mrs Ramsey avec ses enfants, contre le père, contre vents et marées, le temps qui passe et la Guerre - c'est autour de cette parole donnée que se nouent les désirs enfouis et les pensées tues, que se cristallisent tragiquement les souvenirs d'enfance.
The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful and poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea and follows their lives as they grow up and experience friendship, love and grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival. Regarded by many as her greatest work, The Waves is also seen as Virginia Woolf's response to the loss of her brother Thoby, who died when he was twenty-six.
Être femme réunit deux essais littéraires, féministes et politiques de Virginia Woolf. « Les femmes et la fiction » qui sera la base de son essai célèbre Un lieu à soi, et « Des professions pour les femmes », la transcription d'un discours prononcé par l'écrivaine en 1931 à un congrès féministe. Les deux essais sont précédés d'une préface de la traductrice intitulée « Que signifie être une femme ? » Dans cette préface, Justine Rabat présente les textes de Woolf avec le souci de les replacer dans leur contexte et de montrer de quelle manière leur lecture est aujourd'hui encore indispensable.
'The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye that opened suddenly and softly in the evening' To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values. The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
Orlando tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through history first as a man, then as a woman. At its heart is the figure of Woolf's friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, and Knole, the historic home of the Sackvilles. Orlando mocks the conventions of biography and history and wryly examines sexual double standards.
In this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic licence of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular 'room of one's own', prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential. As relevant in its insight and indignation today as it was when first delivered in those hallowed lecture theatres, A Room of One's Own remains both a beautiful work of literature and an incisive analysis of women and their place in the world. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf features an afterword by the British art historian Frances Spalding. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity. Published almost a decade later Three Guineas breaks new ground in its discussion of men, militarism and women's attitudes towards war. These two pieces reveal Virginia Woolf's fiery spirit and sophisticated wit and confirm her status as a highly inspirational essayist.
Regarded by many as Woolf's greatest achievement, The Waves follows a set of six friends from childhood to middle age. As the contours of their lives are revealed, a unique novel is unveiled. In this new edition David Bradshaw considers its spellbinding oddness and originality, helping the reader through this most poetic and haunting of novels.
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.br>br>Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.br>br>The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers'' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.br>Mrs Dalloway, a Level 7 Reader, is B2 in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future perfect simple, mixed conditionals, past perfect continuous, mixed conditionals, more complex passive forms and modals for deduction in the past.br>br>On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party she is giving that evening. As she walks through London, her thoughts are of the past and her choice of husband. At the same time, and also in London, Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. At the party that evening, their stories come together.br>br>Visit the Penguin Readers websitebr>Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.>
As Katherine Hilbery is helping her mother write the biography of her grandfather, a famous man of letters buried in Poets'' Corner, she becomes engaged to William Rodney, a budding writer with an exaggerated opinion of his own poetical talent. Meanwhile, the suffragette Mary Datchet is in love with Ralph Denham, a lawyer and journalist from a lowly background, who in turn feels more attracted to Katherine. As the stories and the romantic interests of these four young people evolve and intertwine, a picture emerges of a society still obsessed with class and hung up on the social mores of the Victorian era.
By far the most accessible and traditional of all Virginia Woolf''s novels, Night and Day, is a powerful evocation of a fast-changing world and, though conventional in style, addresses many of the author''s recurring preoccupations, such as the role of women in society and the difficulties in reconciling love and marriage.>
Outwardly a novel about life in a country-house in whose grounds there is to be a pageant, Between the Acts is also a striking evocation of English experience in the months leading up to the Second World War. Through dialogue, humour and the passionate musings of the characters, Virginia Woolf explores how a community is formed (and scattered) over time. The pageant , a series of scenes from English history, and the private dramas that go on between the acts, are closely interlinked. Through the figure of Miss La Trobe, and author of the pageant, Virginia Woolf questions imperialist assumptions and, at the same time, re-creates the elusive role of the artist.