But Virginia Woolf's undertaking in her last essays also resonated deeply with her own personal and professional identity as a writer. At least from her teenage years onward, she herself was deeply immersed in print culture as a reader. Of course Ong and McLuhan were also deeply immersed in print culture as readers from at least their teenage years onward, as were all literary scholars of their generation.
Finally, I should note that Virginia Woolf, a pacifist, wrote her novel BETWEEN THE ACTS (1941) and her essays "Anon" and "The Reader" in the midst of World War II in England. She had earlier lived through World War I. No doubt the stress of World War II contributed to her decision to commit suicide.
IN PRAISE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LAST ESSAYS
In the quotations below from Clarke's 2011 volume, I follow the punctuation of his text, unless otherwise noted.
In "Anon" Virginia Woolf says, "The voice that broke the silence of the forest [in Britain] was the voice of Anon" (page 581).
She says, "Anon is sometimes man' sometimes woman. He is the common voice singing out of doors, He has no house. He lives a roaming life crossing the fields, mounting the hills, lying under the hawthorn to listen to the nightingale. . . . He was a simple singer, lifting a song or a story from other people's lips, and letting the audience join in the chorus" (page 581).
See Albert B. Lord's landmark book THE SINGER OF TALES (1960) and the translated version of Candi Rureke's performance of THE MWINDO EPIC, edited and translated by Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene (1971).
Next, Virginia Woolf imagines a more settled time in Britain when settlements included cottages and a manor house and a church. She says that "minstrels came, jugglers, bear leaders, singing their songs at the back door to the farm hands and the maid servants in the uncouth jargon of their native tongue" (page 582).
I guess that "the uncouth jargon of their native tongue" refers to Old English, the language in which BEOWULF is written by Anon.
Middle English emerged after the Normans conquered Britain. A dialect of Middle English is the language of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT by Anon.
Middle English is also the language of Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES. But in many ways, Chaucer was still deeply part of the world of Anon.
After the Normans conquered Britain, "Up stairs they spoke French," says Virginia Woolf. "Anon's words were as uncouth to the master and mistress as to us. Anon singing at the back door was despised. He had no name; he had no place. Yet, even if they felt contempt for the singer, whose body took its souls part in the song, they tolerated him. Even Kings and Queens, the scholars tell us, must have their minstrel. They needed his comment, his buffoonery. They kept him in the house, tolerating him, as we tolerate those who say out loud what we feel, but are too proud to admit. He used the outsider's privilege to mock the solemn, to comment upon the established" (page 582).
Outside the church, he "staged his pageant in the churchyard, or later was given a pitch for his drama in the market place. Still he remained nameless, often ribald, obscene" (page 582).
In Virginia Woolf's day, there were obscenity laws not only in England but also in the United States. As a result, certain books by D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce were involved in famous legal cases involving obscenity laws.
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