Virginia Woolf and hibrid practices

Abstract

The analysis of To the lighthouse, written by Virginia Woolf, and of part of her critical essays gives an opportunity to think about some tense problems in genre theory. The construction of a hybrid genre, called lyrical novel by Ralph Freedman and récit poétique by Jean-Yves Tadié, involves the comprehension of the structure of an ontological quest. That quest represents the construction of a literary identity, a new way of perceiving the world. The architecture of this perception reveals the origin and the development of one of the most significant features in modern and contemporary fiction: the aesthetic expression of the multiplicity of the self. In order to explore these problems writers of lyrical novels used structural transgression of the boundaries of genres. They took advantage of the thin dividing line between the arts to cross them over and to create new structures for the senses.