Committee Chair

O'Dea, Gregory S.

Committee Member

Shaheen, Aaron; North, Susan

Department

Dept. of English

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

With queer theory and gender studies, the knowledge that Virginia Woolf was probably bisexual has come to the forefront of scholarship concerning the writer and her works. With queer theory has come an interest in Sapphism, a term evoking Sappho, the only female lyric poet for whom any poetry remains. Sappho’s poetry reveals her to be a “lesbian”: a woman expressing homoerotic feelings for other women. The word Sapphist has become interchangeable with the word lesbian, and Virginia Woolf has been proven to be a Sapphist in that sense; however, Sapphism as a literary philosophy has remained untouched by scholars. In the following composition, I examinine reflections of Sappho’s themes, motifs, and symbols such as the chora and male interruption, to then argue that literary Sapphism as it exists in the fragments, is also present in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, and The Waves. .

Degree

M. A.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.

Date

5-2013

Name

Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 -- Criticism and interpretation; Sappho -- Criticism and interpretation

Discipline

English Language and Literature

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

vii, 61 leaves

Language

English

Rights

https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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