Virginia Woolf and French Writers: Contemporaneity, Idolisation, Iconisation

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of Woolf’s reception in France through a typology of its three aspects and features: contemporaneity, idolisation, iconisation. First, ‘contemporaneity’ refers not only to a historical coincidence between two writers or thinkers living at the same period of time but also to a form shared sensibility that can disrupt the chronology. Thus, Nathalie Sarraute considered Virginia Woolf her contemporary and came to transform her into a writer of the sixties. Second, ‘idolisation’ coincides mainly with the feminist reception of Virginia Woolf in the seventies-eighties when, in some French writers’ works, admiration became adoration, fascination, and even sanctification. This section of the chapter focuses on the examples of Anne Bragance’s La Dame sur le piédestal and Cecile Wajsbrot’s Une vie à soi in particular. Finally, the third type of reception converts Virginia Woolf into an icon (“iconisation”): she is no more a goddess in this process, but a trace in our collective memory. Anne-James Chaton’s biofiction, Elle regarde passer les gens, exemplifies particularly what is called here iconisation.