Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts

This free course introduces Virginia Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts (1941), with the aim of understanding how she writes about time, memory, and ideas about identity. It also considers why Woolf’s fiction is often considered difficult. Selected extracts from her essays on writing help to clarify some of these perceived difficulties, illuminating complex patterning and structure in this fictional account of an English village, on a day in June in 1939.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts
• 1 Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts
• 2 Background of war
• 2 Background of war
• 3 What can prose fiction do?
• 3 What can prose fiction do?
• 4 Genre
• 4 Genre
• 5 Time and continuity
• 5 Time and continuity
• 6 Woolf and language
• 6 Woolf and language
• 7 Imagery and identity
• 7 Imagery and identity
• 8 The artist in the text
• 8 The artist in the text
• Conclusion
• References
• Further reading
• Acknowledgements