« I saw them as solid globes of crystal » : modélisation du réel dans quelques nouvelles de Virginia Woolf

Abstract

This paper examines several short stories by Virginia Woolf and relates them to the scientific and philosophical context in which they were written. In the early 20thcentury, a few scientists worked on the structure of the atom which was modelled by Rutherford in 1911 and by Bohr in 1913. As for literature, the length of short stories turns out to be quite adapted to modelling, that is abstracting or extracting a model or a figure out of a given situation. However, modelling reaality does mean the text is simplified, far from it. If Valerie Shaw once compared the short story to a grain of sand in which one could see the universe, using Blake’s verse, this analysis of Woolf’s texts will show that the circle (and its derivatives like the sphere and the spiral) is a recurring figure : whether it be the (visionary) characters’ (swollen) eyes, Big Ben’s chime, London’s rattle (the nest of Chinese boxes at the end of « Kew Gardens ») or the snail on his flowerbed whose shell sums it all up.