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Paper III
Brainstorming Topics- November 29, 2012
Consider the ideas of mourning and elegy with A Room of One’s Own
o Think about Judith Shakespeare
o Orlando as an elegy seems comedic in so many ways with its light and fantastical elements
§ Hermione Lee says that Orlando is different from all of Woolf’s other writings because no one dies
§ But why does no one die?
§ How does Orlando fulfill the conventions of a pastoral elegy; consider this concept alongside the belief that a pastoral elegy is necessary to become a truly great writer
· Think about the loss at the core of Orlando—Green makes fun of Orlando as a poet, and she loses Sasha
· Is language being used to regenerate what was lost for Vita? Consider her lover, Violet
· There are autobiographical contexts within Orlando
o How do they relate to the issue of lesbianism
§ Which in itself has many subtexts
· Bisexuality/androgyny
o Politics of gender (Helt, Blair)
· Censorship (relationship to Room)
· Would you say the gypsies act as a type of code? How do they represent/function alongside censorship (Haines) and freedom/escape from gender conventions (Blair, Neverow)
o What about the fox motif within Orlando; how does this function alongside gypsies?
o Do the gypsies and gays represent fluid roles of outcast lifestyles/romantic freedom
· Considering animals, would you say there is a correlation/parallel between animals and women?
o What role do men play in this relationship?
o Think about the roles in terms of a patriarchal hierarchy
· Orientalism (Blair)/exotic civilizations—the Western view of the Orient as the “mysterious East”
o Consider Orientalism’s tie to post colonialism; Orlando goes to Turkey to be changed
§ What does it mean that she enters Constantinople (as it connects the west and the east)?
§ Look at Blair, Snaith, and Philips
· There is an interesting flip flop here; orientalism is a way of “othering”/pushing away through forcing things we find disturbing in our own society (sexuality) onto the “other” society
o Negative in that you are othering/stereotyping
o But freedom occurs in this unknown; you can escape, try on, and play different roles
§ Think of this as freedom v. oppression
· What about the narrator/biographer of Orlando
o Though not many articles set up, there are plenty that discuss this
o How is this narrator different than A Room of One’s Own
§ How does the wild, fantastical invention of the book work with the coherent biographer?
§ Does this work as a reversal of the narrator within Jacob’s Room?
§
· What about war?
o How do warhorses relate to Orlando?
o War is present; this would make a good overarching topic, but there is an intriguing entry into Orlando with the militarism of masculine roles
· Would you consider the text a representation of a woman? How does the text deal with the tension between the real and unreal?
o Does language succeed or fail to make this distinction (Smith)? Does fiction ever become more real than fact? Think about this fantasized biography’s description of Vita in comparison to a boring biography
· What is the role of nature in Orlando? How do nature and literature relate to each other? Can/does literature imitate nature?
· Think about fashion and clothing in consideration with cultural criticism
o Would you say fashion is tied up with social construction of gender?
o What about the fashion construction of gypsies (Blair)?
· How does history develop within Orlando? Would you say Woolf is satirizing her time? Which time periods does she appreciate, if any?
o The totalizing views of history are wild parodies—consider the weather of the age; how does this change your overall understanding of Orlando?
o Is history used, violated? How does the history of literature collide with the history of British culture? What do you think about the way prose style mimics the way Woolf sees the changing historical age?
§ How do you see large sociological overviews of history functioning within Orlando
· What genre is Orlando? Think of the novel as a novel with a key (roman a clef)
o Would you call Orlando a gossipy rendition of real life?
· Through understanding a multiplicity of selves, consider how this functions within Orlando
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