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- Title
"A Curious Pattern Like a Tree:" Edenic Death and Life in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.
- Authors
Porter, Molly E.
- Abstract
This paper charts Virginia Woolf's use of arboreal imagery drawn from Dante and the Bible in Mrs Dalloway to argue that she employs and subverts traditional Christian symbolism to create a uniquely modern conception of interconnected immortal life. Guided by the images of the Edenic and infernal trees that pervade this novel, we can more fully grasp Woolf's roots in religious tradition that branch into an utterly transformed vision of life and death. I argue that Woolf's treatment of Christianity sheds a key light on secular re-conceptions of eschatology in the wake of modern(ist) social and psychological trauma.
- Subjects
WOOLF, Virginia, 1882-1941; MRS. Dalloway (Book : Woolf); DANTE Alighieri, 1265-1321; CHRISTIAN art &; symbolism; EDEN
- Publication
Christianity & Literature, 2022, Vol 71, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0148-3331
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1353/chy.2022.0000