The Many Faces of Virginia Woolf, Medusa, Sphinx, Convert, Celebrity, Prophetess, Professional in Post-2010 Iconotextual narratives by Gazier & Ciccolini, Bechdel, and Gillen & Andrade

Résumé

This essay discusses three post-2010 iconotextual narratives that do not so much appropriate Virginia Woolf’s works as her figure. Whether the focus of a biography in Virginia Woolf (2011), a bande dessinée by Michèle Gazier and Bernard Ciccolini, a tutelary reference in Alison Bechdel’s introspective Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012), or a brief cameo in Über 3/1 (2015) by Kieron Gillen and Gabriele Andrade, what cultural values does the cultural phenomenon known as Virginia Woolf reflect and structure? The mythical figures of Medusa and the Sphinx conjured up by Brenda Silver in Virginia Woolf Icon (1999) still help us understand the Virginia Woolf imagery and imaginary today but less ambiguous archetypes now complexify her visual fashioning, those of the convert, the prophet, and the professional.