“E serei eu uma crítica literária?”: espaços críticos-ficcionais na escrita de Virginia Woolf

Abstract

The artistic production of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), during the first half of the 20th century, subverts conventions from English Realism to declare itself modern, privileging the representation of human subjectivity and (un)consciousness. Whether in her works of fiction or non-fiction, it is possible to observe the development of writing as a space for rupture, conveying her worldview about the aesthetic creation of her time. This work, of an analytical and interpretative nature and based on a comparative approach between tradition and the new, aims to analyze how Virginia Woolf establishes herself as a literary critic and constructs this critical perception through different genres. First, we investigate the author’s Diaries (1920-1930) and how she addresses the connections between “everyday writing” and “literary writing”, evoking the narrow relationship between life and fiction. Further on, we examine nine essays from The common reader (1925), the first collection she organized, to understand how she addresses the tensions between tradition and modernity, the formation of the English novel, and the dialogue with her contemporaries. Then, we analyze how Woolf’s assertions reverberate in the novel Orlando: a biography (1928), which transfigures her position on the rise of modern literature and paves the way for posterity. Considering the diary-essay-fiction triad as a set of interrelated hybrid genres, we draw on contributions from authors such as Hermione Lee (1977), Massaud Moisés (2007), Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (2007), Philippe Lejeune (2014) and Silviano Santiago (2019). Based on the reflections presented, it can be concluded that Woolf’s literary criticism is developed through different forms of writing that impact on each other to structure a project that explores the expanding realm of modern fiction, deepening discussions on memory, criticism, poetic creation, among other categories, in the scope of comparative literature.