"Democratic highbrow": Bloomsbury between élite and mass culture
International conference

Coming from a similar social background and sharing a common progressive
political faith and a sheer contempt for the conventions of their age,
the artists, writers and intellectuals of the Bloomsbury group
represented a new way of living and working which marked a definitive
break with the Victorian tradition and paved the way to modernity in the
English culture. Inspired by the teachings of G. E. Moore and deeply
influenced by the experience of Post-impressionism, between the wars the
group was perceived by the British public alternatively as a stronghold
of culture and civilization against barbarism and as the despicable
epitome of modernist intellectual elitism. However, during those years
the reputation of its members was also based on their participation in
BBC radio broadcasts and on their contribution to the pages of Vogue.
Here they were invited to give their opinions on contemporary issues as
representatives of that high culture which was viewed with suspicion by
the middlebrow and with indifference by the lowbrow. By the end of the
sixties Bloomsbury had turned into a cultural icon, since its values
were seen as foreshadowing the experiences of the counterculture.
Nowadays Bloomsbury is a major presence in the cultural industry but, at
the same time, it continues to raise questions and stimulate critical
reflections: was it a coterie or a democratic avant-garde, an
intellectual authority or an eccentric circle that "lived in squares and
loved in triangles?" These are the issues that the conference seeks to
address in a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing sociology of
cultural processes and history of art, economics and history of ideas,
literature and cultural history.

Scientific committee: Alfonso Amendola, Flora de Giovanni, Marina Lops,
Antonella Trotta.

Comitato organizzativo: Salvatore Bizzarro, Gerardo Salvati, Mario
Tirino.

Contacts: democratichighbrowunisa.it

Università degli Studi di Salerno
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici – Dipartimento di Scienze del
Patrimonio Culturale
in collaborazione con Marte Mediateca


PROGRAM

May 8
Università di Salerno, Aula dei Consigli di Facoltà
(Via Giovanni Paolo II)

10,00 – 13,00
Chair: Maria Teresa Chialant

Frances Spalding (University of Newcastle, UK)
'When are Words Not enough?' Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry

Francesca Orestano (Università degli studi di Milano)
Virginia Woolf and the art of cooking

Fabio Ranchetti (Università degli studi di Pisa)
Morgan Foster & Maynard Keynes: Two Bloomsbury Views on Personal
Relationships

15,00-16,30
Chair: Gian Carlo Sciolla

Claudio Zambianchi (Università di Roma, La Sapienza)
Spiegare l'arte moderna: il "postimpressionismo" fra Londra e New York
(1910-1914 ca.)

AntonellaTrotta (Università degli studi di Salerno)
Clive Bell e la comunità degli spettatori

Ilaria Andreoli (CNRS-ITEM - Université de Caen, Basse-Normandie)
A Manual Occupation. Bloomsbury e l'immagine a stampa

18,00
Cava de' Tirreni, MARTE (137, C.so Umberto I)

Reading, videoconferenza e navigazione guidata del sito
Virginiawoolfblog, a cura di Alfonso Amendola con Salvatore Bizzarro e
Gerardo Salvati.


May 9
Università di Salerno, Aula dei Consigli di Facoltà
(Via Giovanni Paolo II)

9,30 – 13,30
Chair: Marina Lops

Todd Avery (University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA)
A Mandarin for the Masses. Lytton Strachey's Ethical Anarchy

Rossana Bonadei (Università degli studi di Bergamo)
'In wireless conversation'. Bloomsbury e la Radio

Nicola Wilson (University of Reading, UK)
The Hogarth Press and The Book Society

Chair: Flora de Giovanni

Benedetta Guerrini degli Innocenti (psicanalista)
"A house full with unrelated passions": Bloomsbury e la Psicoanalisi

Francesca Manes Rossi (Università degli studi di Salerno)
The territorial report as an accountability tool. A proposal for
Bloomsbury