The crisis of the novel according to the essays and the short story “An unwritten novel” by Virginia Woolf

Authors

  • José Pereira de Queiroz Universidade de São Paulo (USP)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2448-1769.mag.2019.174028

Keywords:

Virginia Woolf, Novel, Short story, Essay, Character

Abstract

This article analyzes Virginia Woolf’s short story “An unwritten novel” in view of the discussion proposed by the author in several of her essays regarding the difficulties and the possibilities faced by her contemporaries when writing fiction. What defines the novel, for Woolf, is the attempt to apprehend and represent a character, a term which stands for both a fictional device in the story and for a distinctive aspect of human experience materialized in a real individual and perceived by a novelist. Woolf identifies the need of her own generation of writers to break with the then established novel conventions to, once again, from the representation of a character, reapproximate the novelist, the world, and the reader. The analyzed short story furthers this discussion not through its themes, but in the formal instability of its narrator.

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Author Biography

  • José Pereira de Queiroz, Universidade de São Paulo (USP)

    José Pereira de Queiroz é mestrando do Programa de Teoria Literária e Literatura Comparada da USP.

References

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Published

2019-12-27

Issue

Section

Ensaios de Curso

How to Cite

Queiroz, J. P. de. (2019). The crisis of the novel according to the essays and the short story “An unwritten novel” by Virginia Woolf. Magma, 26(15), 171-201. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2448-1769.mag.2019.174028