Quand l’envers du décor revient sur le devant de la scène

Abstract

Reading the manuscripts of the diary can give the reader the impression he has access to the backstage of the text but these manuscripts nonetheless stage Virginia Woolf’s work and life. But what really comes on stage is the Diary itself revealing a very controlled construction and a layout which are far from the illusion of a voyeuristic exploration of the text. Woolf plays with the codes and puts on stage the language and the writing process at stake. By inventing another language with signs and secret codes which are not to be kept in a stage whisper, Woolf asserts the modernity of the Diary.