Contracting Authority, Expanding the Canon: The Case of Virginia Woolf

Within the general scope of the conference, the essay focusses on the one hand on the ways in which Virginia Woolf discussed the principle of authority in her essays, reviews and criticism; on the other hand, the restricted status Woolf assigns to the author (as compared with Victorian authorship) is compensated for in the bold achievement of The Waves (1931). Orestano argues that in this novel the authority of the novelist, while conventionally limited, is augmented by a deliberate move towards, and appropriation of, scientific authority and its epistemic view of the nature of the universe. The theory of the light waves, and of particles, as expounded by Eddington and Jeans in Woolf's times, and explained today by Hawking, provides the fittest key of intepretation for the seven characters of The Waves, their colours, character, and destiny.