VIRGINIA WOOLF AND URSULA K. LE GUIN: WRITERS OF A LARGER REALITY

As "writers of a larger reality", Virginia Woolf (1882 -1941) and Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 -2018) were, each in their own time, novelists and essayists who were not limited to seeing words and their meanings as closed correspondences, watertight. Understanding the art of writing through the lens of the collective and of multiplicity, both wrote fiction as if to expand the reach of words and amplify the metaphors that could arise from them. This essay intends to investigate some of the points of contact between Woolf and Le Guin, thinking in particular the dialogue between the non-fiction writings, "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" (1924), written by Woolf, and Le Guin's posthumous response in the text "Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown" (1986). The second part of the essay develops on Woolf and Le Guin's criticisms of the concept of heroism, as well as proposals for reformulating the "primordial" narrative of the hero in terms of a fundamental interdependence for life in society, for the valuing of difference (BUTLER, 2020; BRAIDOTTI, 2011).