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The book is an exploration of the affinities between Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Virginia Woolf's philosophy of beauty and Being embodied in her oeuvre. The study addresses beauty as a mode of being rather than a mere adornment of human existence. Tracing Plato's legacy in the two authors, it espouses the proximity of truth and beauty, and argues for beauty's restorative capacity discerned in the repetitive patterns of the universe. Showing the poetics of Gadamer and Woolf as mutually interpenetrating, it encourages to see the beauty of the poetic word as a gateway to Being. This meditation on beauty and Being contests the prevailing ways of thinking about the (in)dependent fields of literature and philosophy.
List of contents
Hermeneutics of the beautiful - Hans-Georg Gadamer's ontology of art as play - Virginia Woolf's philosophy of beauty and Being - Beauty as a mode of Being - Beauty's restorative capacity - The beauty of poetry as a gateway to Being - The 'moment of being' and the beauty of authenticity - The trope of eternal renewal
About the author
Mägorzata Ho¿da, Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of ¿ód¿, Poland. PhD in British literature, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toru¿; PhD in philosophy, The Pontifical University of John Paul II, Kraków. Junior Associate Fellow of the International Institute for Hermeneutics.
