This study will focus on the period between 1930 and the start of the Second World War to argue that the later social and political developments of the interwar years had a profound impact on the ethical ideas expressed in the late works of the two seminal Modernist writers: Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. These writers were singularly engaged in rethinking the foundations of philosophical ethics, and their late works illustrate how the political context of the 1930s helped to reshape their perspectives on ethical concerns about the role of art and the artist in times of crisis, the necessary characteristics of public discourse, identity and community, and the possible sources of moral guidance.
This research will begin with a discussion about the triangular relationship between late Modernism, war, and ethics to establish that there is an inextricable connection between the historical milieu in which the late works of these writers emerged and the way that they understood and wrote about ethics. The first chapter on Woolf will highlight her critique of modern Western academia to examine her ethical discourse on identity, epistemic violence, and the public writer in The Years (1937), Three Guineas (1938), Between the Acts (1941) and “Anon” (1940-1941). The second chapter on Eliot will examine his late works, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Four Quartets (1943) to show how Eliot’s 1927 conversion to Anglo-Catholicism and his disillusionment with British liberal democracy in the 1930s informed his ideal of a Christian community and his vision of the ethics of liturgy. These chapters will explore the ethical paradigms in their late works to suggest that both Woolf and Eliot offered distinctive and valuable discourses on interwar ethics
