Virginia Woolf, Hippolyte Taine and a Neuroscientific Approach

Abstract

In this paper, by bridging the gap between neuroscience and literary study, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine’s historical method, revitalized by neuroscientific studies, would be obtained to investigate Virginia Woolf’s style of writing. Specifically, Taine’s theory—it is through race, surroundings, epoch that the life of an author and his/her literary productions are shaped—would be conjoined with the neuroscientific notion of epigenetics inherent in the theory which asserts that the character of an individual is the result of the mixture of the individual's circumstances of birth and his/her sociocultural environment to illuminate the shaping powers beneath Woolf’s style of writing. As a result of Taine’s updated theory, Woolf’s worldview was shaped by, first, the race; the second, the surroundings, which investigates childhood condition, which acted upon Woolf’s predisposition to bipolar disorder to lead to her mental illness because of her experience as a sexually abused child. The epoch or sociocultural environment, the third force, affected Woolf’s worldview through the dominant ideas (of William James) and major events (such as two great wars as well as scientific and technologic progress). Thus, this study would seek a collaboration between neuroscience and Taine’s historical approach to literary productions with the aim of updating and invigorating this literary theory in order to scrutinize Woolf’s style of writing.

Keywords: Virginia Woolf, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Neuroscience, Antonio Damasio