Osborne, Woolf Seminar:
More Jacob's Room tips:
Julian the Apostate,
war, heroism, the contemplative
v. the active life, etc.
Julian the Apostate (Flavius Claudius Julianus),
331?–363, Roman emperor (361–63), nephew of Constantine I (Constantine
the Great); successor of Constantius II.
. 
Coin with image of Constantius II
(no image of Julian available)
Notice that Julian only lived to be 33 or 34 (like Christ?)
and that he was very young when he became emperor (29, according to Gore
Vidal), and that he was only emperor for three to four years before being
killed. You may wish to ask in what ways these facts bear any resemblance
to Jacob's short life.
Julian the Apostate was not only an emperor but also a
writer
of some merit, and his works were translated into English by W. C. Wright
(3 vols., 1913–24), shortly before and during the time that Virginia Woolf
was writing Jacob's Room.
Note that Jacob has earlier selected a volume of Byron,
the romantic poet, from Rev. Floyd's study. Jacob studies the classics
(here, the Romans; elsewhere the Greeks), as well as the English tradition
in literature. Consider what we learn about Jacob from his interest in
the notion of the "Byronic" hero and in Julian the Apostate. If Jacob's
Room is a study in the difficulty of knowing someone, of truly understanding
another person's character, or of the role absence plays in that difficulty,
then it also interrogates the notion of the "hero" or the "heroic" as a
subject of modern fiction. Julian was a scholar (drawn to "the contemplative
life") who also was a "man of action". He was known as a fair and just
ruler. who Jacob, like many young men, is interested in the question of
choosing one or the other, or balancing the two. He is a scholar, and later
he, too, will be called to become a man of action, though not in the classically
heroic sense of Julian. Jacob and his friends read Thomas Carlyle's writings.
"Does History Consist of the Biographies of Great Men?" is an essay lying
on the table in his empty room. This is clearly in response to Carlyle's
theories of history and biography, theories similar to those of Ralph Waldo
Emerson in America. These notions of the larger-than-life individual romantic
hero are subject to question during Woolf's time, especially after World
War I.
Note that Jacob's Room also pursues questions of
religious
faith. Julian the Apostate, at some point during his scholarly studies,
rejected his own Christian faith. Jacob and his scholarly friends also
must seek to reconcile their religious faith with their classical and other
studies. They may or may not keep their Christian faith. This tension is
felt in the novel.
More about Julian the apostate, adapted from The Columbia Encyclopedia:
"His education combined Christian and Neoplatonic ideas. He and his half brother Gallus were sent (c.341) to Cappadocia. When Gallus was appointed caesar (351), Julian was brought back to Constantinople.
After Gallus had been put to death, Julian was called from the quiet of a scholar's life and made (355) caesar.
Sent to Gaul, he was unexpectedly successful in combating the Franks and the Alemanni and was popular with his soldiers. When Constantius, fearing Julian, ordered him (360) to send soldiers to assist in a campaign against the Persians, Julian obeyed, but his soldiers mutinied and proclaimed him Augustus. He accepted the title, but Constantius refused to yield the western provinces to him. Before the two could meet in battle to decide the claim, Constantius died, naming Julian as his successor . . .
Although as emperor Julian issued an edict of religious toleration, he did try unsuccessfully to restore paganism."The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition New York: Columbia University Press: 1993.
.Bibliography: See G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (1978); Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellanism (1981)."
In 1985, novelist Gore Vidal published Julian, an historical novel about Julian the Apostate. In the blurb for the book, Random House writes that Julian "ascended to the throne in A.D. 361, at the age of twenty-nine, and was murdered four years later after an unsuccessful attempt to rebuke Christianity and restore the worship of the old gods." (boldface mine).But according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, Julian was killed in a skirmish during a campaign against the Persians. He was succeeded by Jovian, who restored Christianity to the "privileged position it had enjoyed before Julian."
Questions to consider:
was Julian murdered for his refusal to conform to the dominant Christian beliefs of his time?
[he wanted to restore pagan beliefs (read neoplatonic; read: classical/neoclassical in Jacob's time)]Consider: what, if anything, the novel Jacob's Room implies about
war
pacificism
religious faith
heroism
the scholarly life
the value of writing (remember, Julian was also a writer)
character, and the ability to know another
conformity (religious, social, sexual)
the implications of all of this for narrative form
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page and links updated May 30 2000