Virginia Woolf, página 6 de 54

On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, is preparing for a grand party that evening.As she walks through London, buying flowers, observing life, her thoughts are in the past, and she remembers the time when she was as young as her own daughter Elizabeth; her romance with Peter Walsh, now recently returned from India; and the friends of her youth. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. As the day draws to its end, his world and Clarissa's collide in unexpected ways.

Esta novela es un capítulo imprescindible en la historia de la novelística contemporánea, el punto más alto de la stream of consciousness woolfiana, donde se hacen patentes las proximidades y diferencias respecto de Faulkner y Joyce. La mas celebre traduccion, ademas, de Carmen Martin Gaite. Durante una excursio a un faro, los miembros de la familia Ramsay se muestran al lector en toda su complejidad y se presentan eredados en una trama de sentimientos cruzados y contradictorios en la que la figura paterna ocupa un lugar central pero problematico (objeto especialmente del rencor del hijo).Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) es sin duda una de las novelistas britanicas mas influyentes del siglo XX, tanto por la novedad de los temas que aborda en sus obras como por la composicion formal de las mismas. Fundadora con su marido Leonard Woolf de la editorial Hogarth Press, donde publicarian a Rilke, Svevo o Freud, entre otros, no tardo en convertirse en uno de los nombres mas sobresalientes del llamado ?Grupo de Bloomsbury? (Roger Fry, John M. Keynes, Vanessa Stephen, E. M. Foster...). Despues de dedicarse por un tiempo a la critica literaria, en 1915 inicio una carrera como narradora marcada por la voluntad de liberar la prosa inglesa del realismo y la uniformidad en que se habia estancado, al tiempo que investigaba...

Jacob Flanders is a young man passing from adolescence to adulthood in a hazy rite of passage. From his boyhood on the windswept shores of Cornwall to his days as a student at Cambridge, his elusive, chameleon-like character is gradually revealed in a stream of loosely related incidents and impressions: whether through his mother's letters, his friend's conversations, or the thoughts of the women who adore him. Then we glimpse him as a young man, caught under the glare of a London streetlamp. It is 1914, he is twenty-six, and Europe is on the brink of war ! This tantalizing novel heralded Woolf's bold departure from the traditional methods of the novel, with its experimental play between time and reality, memory and desire.

As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, whose trauma and hallucinations end in tragedy, as the links between the two characters unfold.

Nell'ottobre del 1928 Virginia Woolf fu invitata a tenere due conferenze sultema Le donne e il romanzo. E l'occasione per elaborare in maniera sistematicale sue molte riflessioni su universo femminile e creativita letteraria.Risultato e questo straordinario saggio, vero e proprio manifesto sullacondizione femminile dalle origini ai giorni nostri, che ripercorre ilrapporto donna-scrittura dal punto di vista di una secolare esclusioneattraverso la doppia lente del rigore storico e della passione per laletteratura.

On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax...

Written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend, the charismatic, bisexual writers Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a playful mock 'biography' of a chameleon-like historical figure who changes sex and identity at will. First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf's own time.

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton CollegeCambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazingpolemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fateof Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of awoman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.