This thesis examines the way in which the fictional biographies of Virginia Woolf, Orlando and Flush, prefigure central tenets of postmodern fiction. To demonstrate the postmodern elements present in Orlando and Flush, this thesis focuses on how the fictional biographies exhibit three postmodern characteristics: concern for historiography, extensive use of parody, and the denaturalization of cultural assumptions. Born from Woolf’s desire to revolutionize biography by incorporating elements of fiction alongside historical fact, these two novels parallel later works of historiographic metafiction in several key respects. Woolf’s extensive use of parody in Orlando and Flush prefigures how postmodern parody foregrounds the many ways in which all narratives are inherently constructions. Woolf also expresses a postmodern attitude by denaturalizing cultural assumptions about sexual difference and social class. When taken together, these three traits reveal how Orlando and Flush possess an ontological philosophy indicative of postmodern literature.

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Cette thèse a pour objectif d’établir certains principes d’une potentielle théorisation de l’écriture biographiques. En liant des exemples prosaïques du XIXe siècle à certaines bases théoriques du XXIe siècle, il est question d’explorer les récurrences qui ont contribué à faire de certaines biographies des succès ou des échecs. En tant que biographe, essayiste et critique, Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) est un sujet d’étude idéal qui permet d’analyser la relation entre le biographe, le biographié et le lecteur. Puis, selon le schéma structurel de la métahistoire proposé par Hayden White, il est possible d’émettre l’hypothèse que la biographie peut être un genre à part entière autant du point de vue de la forme que du fond. / The objective of this thesis attempts to illustrate a series of principles which could potentially lead to a theorisation of biographical writing. By exposing prosaic literary examples of the XIX century and certain theoretical bases of the XXI century, it is possible to depict recurrences that have contributed to the success or failure of various biographical works. Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) as a biographer, essayist and critic appears to be the ideal subject that enables one to analyse the relationship between biographers, biographees and readers. Furthermore, the structural scheme of metahistory, as suggested by Hayden White, brings us one step closer to the assumption that biography can stand as a full-fledged genre both in terms of form and substance.