Abstract

Virginia Woolf's aesthetic theory begins with the moment of being, the significant moment which distinguishes itself by the relative permanence it confers on an experience. Moments of being are the subject of much of her fiction and criticism, but additionally, they belong to the philosophical tradition of aesthetic experience. ;This dissertation focuses on the ways in which Woolf employs moments of being in her later writing, from The Second Common Reader through Between the Acts. Her later writing discloses how moments of being are created, preserved, and valued, as well how they are thwarted. The dissertation gives detailed readings of her later novels, The Years and Between the Acts, and covers Woolf's practice of criticism, both literary and social, in which these moments of being are explored. ;Equally important, however, is the vitality that Woolf's writing brings to the very idea of aesthetic experience, an idea which has become devitalized in recent discourse. The dissertation therefore devotes much discussion to the ways in which Woolf's theory of aesthetic experience confirms some parts of the extant tradition, while challenging others. She sees, with T. W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and John Dewey, aesthetic experience as the model for the dissolution of binary distinctions, which leads, finally, to aesthetic experience as a means of social critique. With Roger Fry and Clive Bell, she distinguishes the importance of form. Like Dewey, Woolf understands aesthetic experience to be more than intellectual, as a somatic and emotional event that also reveals our relationship to the non-human world. Woolf's feminism, however, is a direct challenge to theories that restrain the aesthetic experience of women. Moreover, because Woolf is a novelist, she is able to furnish the aesthetic experience she is also trying to theorize. ;Woolf's aesthetic theory does not concern itself with providing the truth-content of the moment of being, nor does it seek to confer aesthetic judgment, though these elements too are part of aesthetic experience. Instead, it appeals to shared values of community, freedom, and pleasure. Woolf's aesthetic theory reminds us what makes life worth living, and her aesthetic practice takes us there