Abstract

FALOMIR, Sofía. Woolf's Orlando and the Biographical Method. Acta poét [online]. 2016, vol.37, n.2, pp.53-73. ISSN 2448-735X.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ap.2016.2.734.

Woolf's playful mock-biography Orlando is an endeavour to put forth the complexities inherent to biography as a literary genre. The novel is preoccupied with the relationship between observer and observed, the issue of whether objectivity is possible or even desirable, the discrepancy between art and life, the relationship between signifier and signified, and the flawed nature of language as a medium of representation. The present paper will discuss these matters as portrayed by Woolf, arguing that through the playful style of the novel, Orlando challenges the possibility of biographical writing as a whole when it seeks to be a faithful portrait of life. Ultimately, Woolf conveys that the division between "life" and "writing", or "fiction" and "truth" is less clear than it might seem.

Keywords : Biography; modernism; magic realism; fiction; truth.

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