ABSTRACT
One of Virginia Woolf’s late essays bears the interrogative title, ‘Why?’. 1 In it she questions many widely accepted precepts and practices, and singles out the lecture for particular attention. ‘Why lecture?’ she asks, ‘Why be lectured?’
In the old days, [she continues] when newspapers were scarce and carefully lent about from hall to rectory, such laboured methods of rubbing up minds and imparting ideas were no doubt essential. But now, when every day of the week scatters our tables with articles and pamphlets in which every shade of opinion is expressed, far more tersely than by word of mouth, why continue an obsolete custom which not merely wastes time and temper, but incites the most debased of human passions – vanity, ostentation, self-assertion, and the desire to convert?
