The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf

Subjects:

• Literature » American Literature
• Literature » English Literature
• Multicultural Studies » Black Studies
• Women's Studies » Women in Literature & the Arts

Reviews:

• Williams provides the fist full-length, joint study of the two women.
  —Choice
• Williams' analyses move scholars forward in quest of insights that may increase understanding without erasing differences.
  —The Virginia Woolf Miscellany Fall 2002
• [A] well researched, wonderful book that provides scholars and general readers with interesting ways to view how the works of these two great artists intersect.
  —Woolf Studies Annual 2003
• [U]seful to further understanding of these two women writers, their respective literary traditions, and a general theory of modernity and modernist literature.
  —American Literature March 2003

• Endorsement From Tuzyline Jita Allan
  Associate Professor, English Department
  Baruch College, City University of New York: The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf satisfies a longstanding need for a full-scale intertextual analysis of two twentieth-century literary giants. Lisa Williams brings together Morrison and Woolf for a penetrating look at the subtle differences and unexpected similarities in the writer's artistic and cultural sensibilities. Showcased in a compelling comparison of seemingly far-flung texts is the timeless theme of the alienated artist, burnished and richly contextualized with contemporary critiques on race, gender, and culture. This splendid coupling of Woolf and Morrison will convince all students of literature to continue the practice of reading across cultures.
• Endorsement From Beverly Guy-Sheftall
  Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies
  Spelman College
  Atlanta, Georgia: Lisa Williams' timely study of the artist as outsider in the novels Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf is a masterful comparative women's studies project in which she demonstrates the validity of employing an intersectional analysis of race and gender and constructions of whiteness in the work of two of the most significant writers/intellectuals of the twentieth century. Williams' reading of Morrison and Woolf makes an important contribution to our understanding of these influential figures and their conception of female subjectivity in all its complexity.
• Endorsement From Jane Marcus
  Distinguished Professor
  CUNY and CCNY: Reading Morrison and Woolf together is a brilliant strategy. What Lisa Williams finds in her remarkable study is how much the two great 20th century writers have in common as radical outsiders, critics of their cultures and, aesthetically, as experimental writers trying to give voice to the silenced and oppressed. It is time to read Woolf through the lens of race and Morrison as a universal figure.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The Voyage Out
• The Bluest Eye
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Sula
• To the Lighthouse
• Beloved
• Epilogue
• Index