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John Green teaches you about Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel, To the Lighthouse. Let’s face it. You’re not reading To the Lighthouse for the plot. There’s not a whole lot of plot, unless you count the tension about the beef stew. You’re reading it because it’s a pioneering literary work that explores point of view, narrative flow, and the nature of art, among other things. You’re going to love it. I mean, part of the story is told from the perspective of a house.
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Transcript Provided by YouTube:
00:00
Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course Literature,
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and today we’re letting Virginia Woolf take us to the lighthouse.
00:06
Well, assuming the weather holds and we don’t get lost in our
00:09
endless spiraling contemplation of the ephemerality of all human life.
00:13
We’re gonna explore ‘To the Lighthouse’ as a modernist novel, examine its form
00:16
and style, and discuss its philosophy
00:18
and also its thrilling plot, so get that rowboat ready!
00:22
[intro sequence]
00:31
So Virginia Stephen was born in 1882 to Julia Jackson Duckworth – a member of a publishing family,
00:37
and Leslie Stephen – a literary critic and the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography.
00:43
They were English, if you can’t tell from their names and the idea of a Dictionary of National Biography.
00:48
Both of her parents had been married before, Virginia had three full siblings and four half siblings
00:52
and her most treasured childhood memories were of holidays spent in Cornwall.
00:57
Conveniently, near a lighthouse.
00:59
In 1904, she and her sister Vanessa moved into a house in Bloomsbury, London
01:03
and became the center of a social circle of artists and writers and thinkers known as The Bloomsbury Groups
01:09
Stephen began to write for the Times’ literary supplement and in 1912,
01:13
she married the political theorist Leonard Woolf. In 1915, Virginia Woolf published her first novel.
01:19
She also struggled with mental illness throughout most of her life, even as she became an acclaimed writer
01:23
of fiction and nonfiction and during the Second World War,
01:27
she loaded her pockets with stones and walked into a river, drowning herself.
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Okay, so that’s a bit about the author.
01:32
Before we explore the form and themes of To the Lighthouse,
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let’s review the plot.
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The Ramsay family and a few friends spend a day at their vacation home. They talk about going to the
01:41
lighthouse, but don’t. Ten years pass, and then they do go to the lighthouse.
01:46
Then the book is over.
01:47
No need to go to the the Thought Bubble for that plot. But even though not much happens,
01:51
a lot is happening in To the Lighthouse.
01:54
So this is a modernist novel
01:55
Broadly speaking, modernism was a philosophical and cultural movement
01:59
That got going in the late nineteenth century and reached its apex just after World War I
02:18
With forty one million people dead on the WWI battlefield
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It was hard to go back to the same old
02:23
pictures and tunes.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.