Dall’ekphrasis alla narrazione: la scrittura visiva di Virginia Woolf

This article explores the relationship between painting and writing in the works of Virginia Woolf. In particular, it further investigates the experimental ekphrasis in Woolf’s essays on art (Pictures and Portarit, Pictures, The Fleeting Portrait) and the abstract style of some short stories inspired by the post-impressionist painting (Mark on the Wall, Blue and Green, The Lady in the Looking Glass: a Reflection). This work shows how essays on art and short stories are experiments on verbal translatability of the images that inspire the structure of the novels (Mrs. Dalloway, 1925; To The Lighthouse, 1927; The Waves, 1931), where descriptions by abstract style alternate with segments of the plot, according to a cognitive model of knowledge that puts in sequence the stages of “perception”, “recognition” and “plotting”.