Virginia Woolf’s Afterlives

<p>This book explores Virginia Woolf’s afterlives in contemporary biographical novels and drama. It offers an extensive analysis of a wide array of literary productions in which Virginia Woolf appears as a fictional character or a <i>dramatis persona</i>. It examines how Woolf’s physical and psychological features, as well as the values she stood for, are magnified, reinforced or distorted to serve the authors’ specific agendas. Beyond general theoretical issues about this flourishing genre, this study raises specific questions about the literary and cultural relevance of Woolf’s fictional representations. These contemporary narratives inform us about Woolf’s iconicity, but they also mirror our current literary, cultural and political concerns. Based on a close examination of twenty-five works published between 1972 and 2019, the book surveys various portraits of Woolf as a feminist, pacifist, troubled genius, gifted innovative writer, treacherous, competitive sister and tragic, suicidal character, or, on the contrary, as a caricatural comic spirit, inspirational figure and perspicacious amateur sleuth. By resurrecting Virginia Woolf in contemporary biofiction, whether to enhance or debunk stereotypes about the historical figure, the authors studied here contribute to her continuous reinvention. Their diverse fictional portraits constitute a way to reinforce Woolf’s literary status, re-evaluate her work, rejuvenate critical interpretations and augment her cultural capital in the twenty-first century</p> <p><strong>Introduction: ‘I Have Been Dead and Yet Am Now Alive Again’: Catching the Phantom</strong></p><p>Biography, fiction and biofiction: from ‘bastard’ to ‘hybrid’</p><p>Visions and designs</p><p>Postmodernist truthful (mis)representations</p><p>From truthful fictions to travesties of truth</p><p>Goals and perspectives</p><p>Chapter 1: Bioplay(giarism)s</p><p>The ‘little cut-and-paste job’</p><p>‘The play’s the thing’</p><p>Virginia’s feminist companions</p><p>The last song of the nightingale</p><p>Virginia and Vita: a year in love</p><p>Chapter 2: Detecting Woolf</p><p>In the shadow of WWI: Virginia as a feminist sleuth</p><p>Who killed Virginia Woolf? The Cambridge Five!</p><p>Chapter 3: Virginia’s Daughters</p><p>Virginia’s long shadow</p><p>Virginia’s biological progeny</p><p>Chapter 4: Vanessa and Virginia</p><p>A tale of two sisters </p><p>Vanessa and her sister: ‘twinned always’ </p><p>Vanessa and Virginia: ‘psychically Siamese’</p><p>Vanessa and Virginia: a biofictional spin-off</p><p>Chapter 5: Polarity, Pairs, Peers and Parallelisms</p><p>Riding the ‘Dark Mare’ at ‘sixty’s gate’</p><p>Adeline and Virginia</p><p>Mandril and the marmoset</p><p>Chapter 6: Biofictive Mirrors: Clarissa Woolf / Virginia Dalloway</p><p>A cameo appearance</p><p>Mrs Woolf, Mrs Dalloway and Mrs Brown: death, birth and survival</p><p>Chapter 7: Bloomsberries Reimagined</p><p>Lytton and Virginia</p><p>Variable geometries: squares, circles and triangles</p><p>Bloomsbury legacies</p><p>Conclusion: Posthumous Lives: ‘I Am Made and Remade Continually’</p><p>Biographical Woolfs and fictional Virginias</p><p>A summing-up of Woolf’s afterlives</p><p>Biofiction as critical interpretation</p><p>Virginia Woolf legend: keeping the myth alive</p>