Elsa Högberg – författare

Revisiting Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novels, Elsa Högberg explores how Woolf’s writing prompts us to re-examine the meaning of intimacy. In Högberg’s readings of Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves, intimacy is revealed to inhere not just in close relations with the ones we know and love, but primarily within those unsettling encounters which suspend our comfortable sense of ourselves as separate from others and the world around us. Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy locates this radical notion of intimacy at the heart of Woolf’s introspective, modernist poetics as well as her ethical and political resistance to violence, aggressive nationalism and fascism. Engaging contemporary theory – particularly the more recent works of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva – it reads Woolf as a writer and ethical thinker whose vital contribution to the modernist scene of inter-war Britain is strikingly relevant to critical debates around intimacy, affect, violence and vulnerability in our own time.

Revisiting Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novels, Elsa Högberg explores how Woolf’s writing prompts us to re-examine the meaning of intimacy. In Högberg’s readings of Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves, intimacy is revealed to inhere not just in close relations with the ones we know and love, but primarily within those unsettling encounters which suspend our comfortable sense of ourselves as separate from others and the world around us. Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy locates this radical notion of intimacy at the heart of Woolf’s introspective, modernist poetics as well as her ethical and political resistance to violence, aggressive nationalism and fascism. Engaging contemporary theory – particularly the more recent works of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva – it reads Woolf as a writer and ethical thinker whose vital contribution to the modernist scene of inter-war Britain is strikingly relevant to critical debates around intimacy, affect, violence and vulnerability in our own time.

Highlights the dazzling variety of interconnected styles and contexts of Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando', by examining its key sentencesIf the line is the privileged semantic unit in verse, we could ask whether the sentence plays the same role in prose. This possibility holds particular relevance for Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando: A Biography', which presents an intriguing collage of different sentence styles. The present collection of 16 original essays offers fresh perspectives on 'Orlando' through a unique attention to Woolf's sentences. By focusing on single sentences in order to address the book's many interlacing connections between aesthetics and context, it aims to recuperate 'Orlando' as one of Woolf's most dynamic textual experiments. To what extent does 'Orlando' enact a politics of the sentence? How does Woolf's manipulation of generic, gendered, sexual and racial boundaries play out on the level of the sentence? These are some of the questions that this timely volume engages. Contributors include: Jane de Gay, Jane Goldman, Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Randi Koppen and Steven Putzel.Key FeaturesOffers fresh close readings of Woolf's 'Orlando' on the level of the sentence, and draws out the sentence as an important textual unit as well as thematic and contextual conceptPresents the first book-length study of the novel in a readable and engaging format, combining forceful intellect and research with an alertness to the text's unique playfulnessCovers a wide range of topics including sexuality, gender, materiality, intimacy, nationality, colonialism, religiosity, theatricality and literary intertextualityDemonstrates the value for literary studies of a methodological focus on single sentences that combines readings of contextual history, politics, gender, and art with close textual analysis

Modernist Intimacies traces modern intimacy back to the first decades of the twentieth century, showing that modernism played a crucial role in its emergence. Intimacy can no longer be seen as an exclusively private, familiar sphere of life independent of socio-political realities, and the twelve newly commissioned chapters present incisive, original perspectives on intimacy as a vital dimension of modernist aesthetic and social practices. They engage topics from music-making, wartime radio broadcasting and transnational relations to diary-writing, sexual pleasure, queer religiosity and same-sex love. In attending to a wide range of print literary texts as well as other media such as church murals and sonic archives, the book also points to the resonance of modernist intimacies in our own time.

Illuminates the new and unsettling forms of intimacy explored in modernist literature and artOpens up fresh perspectives on modernism as central to early twentieth-century explorations of new modes of intimacy, many of which shape today's social and political lifeOffers a timely account of modernist intimacies, where experts elucidate a wide spectrum of modernist texts from within the emergent field of intimacy studiesProvides original and innovative definitions of intimacy that will be valuable for research and teaching in literary subjectsModernist Intimacies traces modern intimacy back to the first decades of the twentieth century, showing that modernism played a crucial role in its emergence. Intimacy can no longer be seen as an exclusively private, familiar sphere of life independent of sociopolitical realities, and the twelve chapters present incisive, original perspectives on intimacy as a vital dimension of modernist aesthetic and social practices. They engage topics from music-making, wartime radio broadcasting and transnational relations to diary-writing, sexual pleasure, queer religiosity and same-sex love. In attending to a wide range of print literary texts as well as other media such as church murals and sonic archives, the book also points to the resonance of modernist intimacies in our own time.

Highlights the interconnected styles and contexts of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by examining individual sentencesIf the line is the privileged semantic unit in verse, we could ask whether the sentence plays the same role in prose. This possibility holds particular relevance for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, which presents an intriguing collage of different sentence styles. The present essay collection of 16 original essays offers fresh perspectives on Orlando through a unique attention to Woolf’s sentences. By focusing on single sentences in order to address the book’s many interlacing connections between aesthetics and context, it aims to recuperate Orlando as one of Woolf’s most dynamic textual experiments. To what extent does Orlando enact a politics of the sentence? How does Woolf’s manipulation of generic, gendered, sexual and racial boundaries play out on the level of the sentence? These are some of the questions that this timely volume engages. Contributors include: Jane de Gay, Jane Goldman, Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Randi Koppen and Steven Putzel.Key FeaturesOffers fresh close readings of Woolf’s Orlando on the level of the sentence, and draws out the sentence as an important textual unit as well as thematic and contextual conceptPresents the first book-length study of the novel in a readable and engaging format, combining forceful intellect and research with an alertness to the text’s unique playfulnessCovers a wide range of topics including sexuality, gender, materiality, intimacy, nationality, colonialism, religiosity, theatricality and literary intertextualityDemonstrates the value for literary studies of a methodological focus on single sentences that combines readings of contextual history, politics, gender, and art with close textual analysis