ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book sets out to uncover the intriguing nature of the bond that Virginia Woolf forged with the Greeks. It argues that the reasons for which Virginia Woolf, an enduring icon of British letters, is most famous her experimental writing, her feminism, her elegiac overtones owe a great deal to her understanding of Greek. The book seeks to pinpoint her early Greek influences and trace their role in the development of her nascent literary aesthetic, an aesthetic markedly characterised by an intriguing sense of reflexivity and inwardness. It offers a comprehensive examination of her readings in the Greek Notebook. The book explores Woolf as the product of synthesis of the 'male' and the 'female' lines of Hellenism, and consider her work as an attempt to negotiate a complex network of socio-cultural, political and textual influences.
