This is an absolutely incredible lecture, very accessible, I found it incredibly insightful and I always find it so helpful and interesting when I have a similar thought to a lecturer whilst reading a novel, and when they then take a simple idea which I have had in passing and expand on it in a more sophisticated way
Professor Mount offers a superb analysis that understands the book as an epic - but on an intimate level, and his insights will enrich any reader’s experience of this great work.
An insightful interpretation to "To the Lighthouse"! My favourite literary work from the twentieth-century. Woolf's work is symbolic. It brings out the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday mundane life. A novel about life, art and time
Thank you, Kay, glad it connected. And belated thanks to all else who've commented on this over the years, for your kindness & thoughtfulness. And your disagreements. :)
EXCELLENT. I will read this novel again and now truly understand and love all the work that Mr Mount put into this great novel. Thank you for your analysis that has helped me to better understand Virginia Woolf novel. Phenomenal job and so well spoken. ❤
Thank you Nick Mount for putting in the hard work analysing To The Lighthouse and sharing it with the public. We all benefit from your clever insights, you turned a brilliant novel into an epic. Fantastic well put together lecture . You’re a genius.
this was fucking incredible i never thought a lecture could give me jitters there was real intimacy in your voice, your cadence, your emotion, thank you for passing it to me
Your knowledge and analysis is commendable. Really enjoyable lecture, professor. Even your pauses are graceful and provide a certain deserving mood to Woolf.
Rarely have I come across a Lecturer as amazing as you. Thank you for your passion and true love for the English Literature. I am a final year student at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and we do not have Lecturers in my opinion who take literature in such depth as you. I love your way of teaching and would love to attend one of your lectures one day. Regards
Many thanks, Carmen--glad you enjoyed it. By chance I just read a great novel by one of your countrymen, Deon Meyer's Fever. Dark, but ultimately hopeful...check it out over the summer.
Nick Mount I actually read all of his novels. And buy them as soon as they come out. I read Fever a month ago and loved it. All of his novels are quite dark and surprising but I love his writing style. It's easy reading as well which is different from Classics like To the Lighthouse. Do you do open lectures for public members often or is it strictly members of the University?
Outstanding lecture. This is my first time reading To the Lighthouse, as it was assigned reading for a PhD seminar in the Subject-Object dialectic. The parallels drawn between epic poetry/Iliad and the novel were particularly enlightening as was the view of Mrs. Ramsay as Woolf's feminist Penelope. Thank you, Professor Mount.
Wonderful talk on MY favorite novel...what's missing is this - alternately the lighthouse SEEMS close but then far...the lighthouse itself is a character as it sheds light and deprives or flashes explicitly in the novel, much like consciousness itself....In Lily's vision of the final landing, what matters is the end, the work of art (not necessarily a MASTERPIECE) to be hung in an attic, appreciated by a few in her day but possibly discovered in a ransack to be something of value. It's fantastic that what isn't really a GREAT VOYAGE Woolf was certainly able to turn into a crossing of immeasurable distances! What is truly Mr Ramsay's character at the landing, with his children on board, when the narrator suggests his thoughts - "We perished each alone" which is the scenario of drowning OR "I have reached it. I have found it," emphasizing the "I" did it alone in FINDING but the WE in drowning with his own children. So Mr Ramsay achieves his vision as Lily does, but in such radically different ways!
Thank u so much.. I feel like I too have had my vision though it might be less lasting than the color of the butterfly's wings...such a pleasure to listen to u..
This is such a unique captivating lecture. I have been teaching Dramatic Arts on secondary level for over 20 years and tonight, your lecture rekindled the reason why I love teaching. Thank you for reminding me. I needed that.
thank you so much for this. i have graduated from school but have recently been craving to do some guided deep reading of books so i started watching some book reviews on virginia woolf but they are all not as thick and full and deep as this lecture is :)
often i have found myself at the feet of scholars.....maintaining me and walking away with the riches of those who are different than I....the ability to maintain a tenacity upon the subject which my fleeting attentions fail to fully grasp...as my father used to say, to sit at the feet of great ones is to open the world to its' possibilities....i am a richer man because of the scholar
I agree with the enthusiastic comments. I was also delighted to learn that Woolf did not like feminist categorization. I have never understood why the Room of your own should be called feminist when it argues against such art that interprets the world from a restricted feminine perspective.
Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” (1927) is a landmark achievement of the twentieth century fiction. When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband and her son. During those ten years, death and misery haunt the Ramsay family. Mrs Ramsay dies. In a sense, the quest to the lighthouse symbolises the inner journey of the characters towards self-realisation and fulfilment of their hopes. It is a symbolic quest or an epic quest of a father and son to realise the “spirituality” and beauty of Mrs Ramsay’s soul. At the same time, Lily Briscoe completes her painting that she has started ten years ago, and her painting becomes an emblem of the immortality of art - Mrs Ramsay lives within Lily’s painting. “To the Lighthouse” which is described as the finest fiction of the twentieth century depicts the inner lives of the characters - the emotional universe of men and women. Woolf’s narrative is fragmented, and her novel is unconventional in its narrative structure. Woolf gives the fragmented, rather disjointed facts about the Ramsay family and allows the reader to build up the story. Besides, it is a novel about feminist spirituality where women are depicted as spiritual, creative and artistic while men possess higher grounds of culture and education.
Thanks. I would just like to mention, that I think it is over-looked how traumatised Wolfe was by the bombing of her home in Bloomsbury. Half the house still stood, and she remarks on seeing the half burned furniture in the living-room. All their memorabilia and books ruined etc. That whole life of theirs was taken away and they had only their memories left, of the gatherings and parties etc. It would have been hard for anyone to bear...but for her, with her fragile mental health, perhaps too much. This could have triggered off her demise ?
New recording: www.audible.co.uk/pd/To-the-Lighthouse-Audiobook/1908671173?qid=1567693965&sr=1-2&pf_rd_p=c6e316b8-14da-418d-8f91-b3cad83c5183&pf_rd_r=8PNR2WTDF3C393JKZE6S&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_2
I found this an absolutely impossible read. The grammar is just ridiculous. There are a hundred commas and bracketed sections within paragrahps making it difficult to remember what the first part of the paragraph was even about.
Stream of consciousness might be a fascination with the avant-garde, but if story has purpose then it must be accessable to the average reader else it falls on deaf ears.
