Modernism, Memory, and Desire - T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf

Sep 21, 2026

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T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, contemporaries and mutual readers, are linked through a booklength study of their shared modernist concerns. Modernism, Memory, and Desire argues that their poetic, fictional, critical, and autobiographical writing repeatedly turns to the language of the body, desire, and sensuality to render memory’s processes. The study combines extensive archival research with new interpretations, pairing Eliot’s lesser-known bawdy poetry with major works such as The Waste Land, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Orlando, and To the Lighthouse.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages276

Reading Time11 h 36 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

1 An unexpected beginning: sex, race, and history in T. S. Eliot’s Columbo and Bolo poems

2 Mixing memory and desire: rereading Eliot and the body of history

3 Eliot, eros, and desire: “Oh, do not ask,‘What is it?’”

4 T. S. Eliot: writing time and blasting memory

5 Virginia Woolf,(auto)biography, and the eros of memory: reading Orlando

6 Other kinds of autobiographies: sketching the past, forgetting Freud, and reaching the lighthouse

7 Remembering what has “almost already been forgotten”: where memory touches history

Epilogue

Notes

Index

This page intentionally left blank MODERNISM, MEMORY, AND DESIRE: T . S . ELIOT AND VIRGINIA WOOLF T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries, readers and critics of each other’s work, and friends for over twenty years. Their writings, though, have never been paired in a booklength study. Modernism, Memory, and Desire proposes that some striking correspondences exist in Eliot and Woolf’s poetic, fictional, critical, and autobiographical texts, particularly in their recurring turn to the language of the body, desire, and sensuality to render memory’s processes. The book includes extensive archival research on some mostly unknown bawdy poetry by T. S. Eliot while offering new readings of major work by both writers, including The Waste Land,“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Orlando, and To the Lighthouse. McIntire juxtaposes Eliot and Woolf with several major modernist thinkers of memory, including Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, and Walter Benjamin, to offer compelling reconsiderations ofthe relation between textuality, remembrance, and the body in modernist literature. gabrielle mcintire is Assistant Professor of English at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. MODERNISM, MEMORY, AND DESIRE: T. S. ELIOT AND VIRGINIA WOOLF GABRIELLE MCINTIRE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York [www.cambridge.org](www.cambridge.org) Information on this [title: www.cambridge.org/9780521877855](title: www.cambridge.org/9780521877855) © Gabrielle McIntire 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2008 ISBN-13 978-0-511-37683-2 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-521-87785-5 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For Mary Carolyn and Harley Contents Illustration page viii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 An unexpected beginning: sex, race, and history in T. S. Eliot’s Columbo and Bolo poems 10 2 Mixing memory and desire: rereading Eliot and the body of history 39 3 Eliot, eros, and desire: “Oh, do not ask,‘What is it?’” 75 4 T. S. Eliot: writing time and blasting memory 101 5 Virginia Woolf,(auto)biography, and the eros of memory: reading Orlando 119 6 Other kinds of autobiographies: sketching the past, forgetting Freud, and reaching the lighthouse 147 7 Remembering what has “almost already been forgotten”: where memory touches history 180 Epilogue 209 Notes 214 Index 248 Illustration T. S. Eliot, “viva bolo!!” The Letters of T. S. Eliot, ed. Valerie Eliot (New York, Harcourt, 1988), vol. i, 43. 17

FAQs

What central idea does Modernism, Memory, and Desire present?

It presents correspondences between Eliot and Woolf, arguing that they use the language of the body, desire, and sensuality to render the processes of memory.

How does the book support its comparisons between Eliot and Woolf?

It uses extensive archival research on lesser-known work by T. S. Eliot and offers new readings of major works by both authors.

Which major texts are discussed in the book?

The study includes discussion of The Waste Land, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Orlando, and To the Lighthouse, among other writings.

Sep 21, 2026

Upload by Asher