«There’s something sexual in it ». Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, e la percezione

Abstract

The article aims to highlight the relationship between Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, authors who are apparently extremely dissimilar. Both authors try to define, in their works, dimensions and modalities of human perception: this feature is analysed in the article by using examples taken from Proust’s Recherche and from Woolf’s novels and essays, with particular reference to The Waves; in Virginia Woolf’s letters and diaries the salient points in which the author expresses her emotional and reflective reactions to the reading of Proust’s novel cycle are traced.