Department of English

Penn-in-London June 25-July 29, 2005

Virginia Woolf helped to shape anew vision of London for the twentieth century, not only through her involvement with the so-called "Bloomsbury" group, with its new frankness about sexuality and honesty about differences of sexual orientation, but also through her novel Mrs. Dalloway, which takes place in a single day in London. With its two protagonists, who are simultaneously opposites, supplements, and doubles of one another, Mrs. Dalloway takes us through a London shocked by the aftermath of World War I. The urban world here is social and violent, poetic and horrifying, trivial and insane. In addition to Mrs. Dalloway, we will read A Room of One's Own, and choose our remaining texts from Jacob's Room, To the Lighthouse, Three Guineas, The Pargiters/The Years, and Between the Acts. Please come to the first day of class having read a Room of One's Own.

Note: Fulfills Sector VI of the Core Requirement and/or Seminar Requirement of the English Major.