“only writing composes it”: Woolf’s ethical and remedial craftsmanship(?)

Title: “only writing composes it”: Woolf’s ethical and remedial craftsmanship(?)
Speaker: Savina Stevanato
Date: 26.04.2024

Virginia Woolf’s corpus variously resonates with, and sheds light on, our contemporary condition of anthropogenic global crisis. But can it also impact it by suggesting some corrective measures? Any answer, albeit tentative, must consider Woolf’s wider perspective on otherness and difference, and her highly relational sensibility that underlies the remedial value of her writing. The bond between ‘relational’ and ‘remedial’ (or the remedial import of what is relational) is a major issue that Woolf broadly thematizes on the level of content, and successfully practices on the level of form. On both levels, the remedy consists of ensuring wholeness, which pertains to both ethics and aesthetics. Nevertheless, there seems to be a discrepancy between her ethical suggestions related to content and her aesthetic results related to form: the latter being, seemingly, more remedial than the former.