The Bloomsbury Group has always fascinated people mainly because of
the personalities of the members. What
is often lost is their brilliance as thinkers and artists. Rather than offering the usual parade of personalities,
this s/dg will examine the ideas of the members of this remarkable group of
creative minds. It will commence with an
excerpt from G. E. Moore’s Principia
Ethica, the foundation of the group’s world view. We will also read Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, her brilliant essay on
women’s equality; John Maynard Keynes’s Can
Lloyd-George Do It?, his scathing critique of laissez-faire economics; the
chapter on Florence Nightingale from Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, his innovative approach to writing history; E. M. Forster’s novel
about homosexuality (unpublished during his lifetime), Maurice; and selections from Roger Fry’s Vision and Design, his ground-breaking theories of modern art.
1. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (on the intrinsic value
of virtue); Nicholas Griffin, “Moore and Bloomsbury”
2. Virginia Woolf,
“Three Guineas”
3. John Maynard
Keynes, Can Lloyd-George Do It?
4. Lytton Strachey,
“Florence Nightingale” (from Eminent
Victorians)
5. E. M Forster, Maurice
6. Maurice, cont.
7. Roger
Fry, "Art and Socialism" and "Art and Science" (fromVision and Design)