Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language

"Clements’s book explores Woolf’s sustained attention to the production and reception of sound, gathering together arguments about sonic events, art music, and language in Woolf’s work. Through her bold scope, astute close readings, and careful theoretical expositions, she provides a sophisticated account of the vital importance of sound production and reception to Woolf’s ethics and experimentation."

Emma Sutton, Woolf Studies Annual

"Elicia Clements in Virginia Woolf, Music, Sound and Language (2019) takes a deep dive into these relationships and argues that the concepts of sound and music enabled Woolf to develop a new understanding of her own writing and literature. This is new and exciting."

Patricia Laurence, City College, City University of New York, Virginia Woolf Miscellany

"Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language demonstrates Woolf’s consistent attention to and development of imagery and its relation to perception, character, and community – including the power relations of community such as colonial power, class hierarchies, and gender relations. Elicia Clements is certainly one of a relatively few scholars who have tackled the conceptual complexities of music-text relationships, making this work exceptional."

Gyllian Phillips, Department of English, Nipissing University

"Despite the abundance of existing scholarship about Virginia Woolf, including her fiction, her essays, her diaries, and her letters, there is a relatively small amount of work that focuses solely and expansively on her relationship to music, sound, and language. In this highly readable book, Elicia Clements uncovers several new areas in musico-literary scholarship and the works of Virginia Woolf."

Bret Keeling, Department of English, Northeastern University