Passing and Flowing: Rhythmical Entanglements of Writing, Painting and Knitting in Virginia Woolf and Berthe Morisot

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“[F]or though they must part in the end, painting and writing have much to tell each other: they have much in common”, Virginia Woolf claims. This chapter tracks the relation among writing, painting, and a more mundane creative practice: knitting. Woolf often describes and stages painterly effects of material reading practices and a language that assumes textile qualities. In To the Lighthouse, moments in which writing, painting, and knitting touch upon each other are often presented as epiphanies that emerge from rhythmical patterns connecting words, textiles, colour, elements of the natural world and human beings. Expanding on such rhythmical entanglements in Woolf’s writing, I will discuss Berthe Morisot’s painting “Young Woman Knitting”. In the painting, the movement of the brushwork performatively presents the activity of knitting, which creates an effect of epiphanic connectedness that immediately splinters into fragments again.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPhenomenology, New Materialism, and Advances In the Pulsatile Imaginary : Rites of Disimagination
EditorsNicoletta Isar
Number of pages16
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
Publication date2024
Pages117-131
ISBN (Print)9783031499449, 9783031499470
ISBN (Electronic)9783031499456
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

ID: 385017889