VIRGINIA WOOLF, JANE ELLEN HARRISON, AND THE SPIRIT OF MODERNIST CLASSICISM

In a work that re-investigates archival materials and deploys an innovative theoretical framework, Jean Mills explores the intellectual and political relationship between Virginia Woolf and the Cambridge classicist Jane Ellen Harrison. Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, and the Spirit of Modernist Classicism discovers an intimate connection crucial to Woolfs professional identity and intellectual and artistic development in Harrisons controversial, feminist interpretations of Greek mythology. Mills argues that cross-reading Jane Harrison and Virginia Woolf exposes a distinctive relationship between two women intellectuals, one that does not rehearse the linearity of influence but instead demonstrates the intricacy of intertextuality-an active and transformative use of one body of writing by another writer-that makes of Virginia Woolfs modernism a specifically feminist amplification. This cross-reading reveals a dimension of modernism that has been overlooked or minimized