Religion and Representation

In recent years, the relationship between religion and representation has been examined with particular intensity in the field of modernist studies, to which all books reviewed in this chapter have contributed. It is telling that three of them are devoted to Virginia Woolf, whose firm rejection of patriarchal Christianity and the established church has for years been considered a prime example of modernism’s hostility to religion. New scholarship on Woolf, religion, and spirituality offers a much more nuanced view of her engagement with Christian culture and illustrates the wealth of new methodological developments in the field of modernist studies. The review opens with a discussion of the recent religious turn in modernist studies, situating it within the expansion of the field connected to the emergence of the new modernist studies. Subsequently, it examines four new books that contribute to scholarship on modernism and religion. The chapter is divided into five sections: 1. The New Modernist Studies and Religion; 2. Jane de Gay, Virginia Woolf and Christian Culture; 3. Stephanie Paulsell, Religion Around Virginia Woolf; 4. Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf, edited by Kristina K. Groover; 5. Martin Lockerd, Decadent Catholicism and the Making of Modernism. The books reviewed illustrate the scope and depth of new research into modernism and religion, offering a fresh critical perspective that challenges the widely accepted view of modernism as a purely secular movement.