Event overview
The Auto / Bio / Fiction series returns in 2024/25 with biofiction specialists Monica Latham on Woolf in the French Imagination and Bethany Layne on the Queen on screen
Monica Latham, “Virginia Woolf in the French Imagination”
This paper will explore the articulations between biography and fiction, raising questions about biographers’ and creative authors’ use of facts, creativity and imagination. Among the multifarious production of French biographies of and biofiction about Virginia Woolf, three case studies will illustrate the wide spectrum of creative endeavours, from speculative biography as ‘zero-degree biofiction’ to imaginative biofiction.
In her speculative biography, Sept Femmes (2013), Lydie Salvayre reprocesses biographical information about Woolf and builds her life narrative in the quasi-religious attitude of adoration which started in France in the context of the rise of a feminist consciousness. Salvayre selects objective facts but at the same time she subjectively expresses her admiration for her subject's achievements.
In Geneviève Brisac's Interview avec Virginia Woolf (1982) – a “conversation” beyond the grave – Brisac adopts the posture of a journalist interviewing Woolf for Le Monde. To fabricate Woolf's “real” answers, Brisac uses techniques such as quoting “like a writer, not like an academic”, cutting, pasting, reshuffling, editing and assembling fragments of Woolf's primary sources – a creative practice I have previously called “first-degree biofiction”.
Lastly, I will examine Une année amoureuse de Virginia Woolf / Virginia et Vita (1990 / 2014) by Christine Orban, the first contemporary author to have imagined Woolf composing her prose (8 years before Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel The Hours, 1998). Orban’s adopts what Frances Wilson has called “vampiric” method.
I will conclude with some remarks on Woolf in the French literary and cultural contexts.
Bethany Layne, ‘”As your Queen, and as a grandmother”: Elizabeth II’s tribute to Princess Diana in two works by Peter Morgan.’
This paper examines two fictional representations of Elizabeth II’s televised belated tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, originally recorded the day before Diana’s funeral, nearly a week after her death, in an atmosphere of sustained media pressure. Both representations are by Peter Morgan, produced 17 years apart. The Queen (2006) starred Helen Mirren and was the first fictionalisation of “Diana week” and the first film about a living sovereign. ‘Aftermath’ (2023), Episode 4 of The Crown Season 6, starred Imelda Staunton. They are bridged by Morgan’s play The Audience (2013), in which Mirren also starred, and by The Crown S3, E3: ‘Aberfan’ (2019), in which Elizabeth’s response to the mining disaster is used both to anticipate and to recall her response to Diana week. Close analysis will tease out their differences and allow me to assess the popular significance of the seven days at two distinct historical moments: within a decade of Diana’s death, and in the wake of the Queen’s own passing, and to explore the societal changes wrought in the interim.
More information on the seminar
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Nov 2024 | 5:30pm - 7:15pm |
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