Virginia Woolf
(25 gennaio 1882 - 28 marzo 1941)
La grande romanziera che affronta la tematica della condizione femminile nel passato e nel presente.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) fu scrittrice dotata di qualità stilistiche d'avanguardia per il linguaggio rarefatto ed essenziale e l'originale concezione del tempo, qualità che vanno ben al di là di un preteso autobiografismo. Solo a partire dagli anni Settanta, la critica ha infatti superato la visione riduttiva della sua opera come narrativa “impressionistica” al femminile.
Nel 1895, dopo la morte della madre, cade preda della prima tra le gravi crisi nervose che segneranno la sua vita.
Nel 1912, dopo aver rifiutato due proposte di matrimonio e dopo un fidanzamento di pochi giorni, accetta di sposare Leonard Woolf con il quale fonda nel 1917 la Hogarth Press, la casa editrice di grande prestigio che pubblicherà tutte le sue opere (con l'eccezione di Night and Day, edita, come il primo romanzo dalla Ducworth).
Virginia Woolf was an English writer born in London in 1882 who is considered one of the foremost modernists and pioneers of the stream of consciousness of the twentieth century. She studied at home, for most part of her childhood, English classics and Victorian literature. She became a professional writer in 1900 and she published her first novel "The Voyage Out" in 1915.
Woolf became also one of the most important symbolic figures of the 1970s feminist movement.
Her works were very influential, in fact they were read all over the world and translated in more than fifty languages.
Modernism
Modernism is a complex movement which started approximately after 1910 and flourished in the 20s and 30s in Europe.
One thing all the aspects of Modernism have in common is the desire to make a break with the traditions which came before them, through experimentation with form and style. Traditional forms of narration and representation are rejected in favour of a direct attempt to represent the working of the mind and of the unconscious.
In fiction, the reaction against the Victorian realistic tradition became more apparent and writers, under the influence of the new psychological theories, became more concerned with the search for techniques to portray the complexity of the inner life of the individual, challenging the traditional conventions of fiction.
This new technique was called the stream of consciousness as it aimed to reproduce the flow of thought in an individual's mind.
