This paper examines in detail an epiphanic moment in Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own' in the light of George Herbert Mead's social interactionist theory of the mind and of cognition. The epiphanic moment is experienced as an unexpected synthesis of multiple identities and experiences, a conjunction whose very contingency opens up unforeseen possibilities of creative experience. Creativity, openness, unexpectedness, complexity—memorable moments that make the most of this synthesis provide the experience of the subliminal or the unconscious coming to consciousness, and they tend to return to mind and to become milestones in personal development, and in the story of one's relation to oneself. The attention Virginia Woolf pays to the complexity and density of the moment is a tribute both to the present and to the mind—if the mind is to be defined, for the sake of this argument, as the management of emergent complexity, and the present as the locus not just of reality, but of the mental activity that synthesizes it.

Full text:

José Angel García Landa. "The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woof." In The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

18 Pages Posted: 3 Mar 2021

Jose Angel Garcia Landa

Universidad de Zaragoza

Date Written: 2019

Abstract

Keywords: Virginia Woolf, Epiphanies, Modernism, Emergence, Cognition, Self, George Herbert Mead, Consciousness, Cognitive Narratology

Suggested Citation:

Garcia Landa, Jose Angel, The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woolf (2019). José Angel García Landa. "The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woof." In The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso. London: Bloomsbury, 2020., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3758808

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CSN Subject Matter eJournals Cognition & the Arts eJournal - CMBO CSN: General Cognition & the Arts (Topic) - CMBO	Added to eLibrary


LIT Subject Matter eJournals English & Commonwealth Literature eJournal - CMBO LIT: Twentieth-Century British Literature (Topic) - CMBO	Added to eLibrary

LIT Subject Matter eJournals Women, Gender, & Literature eJournal - CMBO	Added to eLibrary
PRN Subject Matter eJournals Philosophy of Mind eJournal - CMBO PRN: Consciousness (Topic) - CMBO	Added to eLibrary

_____. "The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woof." In The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. 109-31.*

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-fictional-minds-of-modernism-9781501359774/

2019

_____. "The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woof." Academia 24 Jan. 2021.*

https://www.academia.edu/44973104/

2021

_____. "The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woof." ResearchGate 1 Feb. 2021.*

DOI: 10.5040/9781501359804.0009

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338872722

2021

_____. "The Mind, A Room of One's Own: An Epiphanic Moment in Virginia Woof." SSRN 3 March 2021.*

https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3758808

2021