A Spirit in Flux: Aestheticism, Evolution and Religion
A Spirit in Flux: Aestheticism, Evolution and Religion
In this chapter, Todd Avery takes the sentence ‘Orlando it seemed had a faith of her own’ as a prompt to explore the many expressions of spirituality and religion in the text. He traces through Orlando an unconventional, anti-institutional form of ‘Woolfian worship’ indebted to Walter Pater’s aestheticism and Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Engaging multiple intersections between modernism and theology, Avery argues that ‘the spirituality of Orlando emerges from a deep wonder before the mystery, strangeness, and absurdity of life’. Avery’s reading illuminates the revelatory potential of Woolf’s writing.
Keywords: aestheticism, evolution, Charles Darwin, modernism, religion, theology, Walter Pater
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