Poetic Effects in the Prose of Virginia Woolf and Emilio Cecchi

Poetic Effects in the Prose of Virginia Woolf and Emilio Cecchi introduces a contextualizing method for the study of the 'poetic' in prose, which highlights the importance of cultural factors in defining the changeable meanings of 'poetry', especially when considered as a value exceeding verse. This method is illustrated through the cross-cultural analysis of the work and ideas of two modernist authors: Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and the Italian essayist Emilio Cecchi (1884–1966). Both authors wanted their chosen prose genres, the novel and the essay, to fulfil some of poetry's roles, but focused on recreating its emotional outcome rather than imitating the techniques of verse. Rejecting the kind of ornated writing generally referred to as prose poetry or poetic prose, they define 'poetry' primarily by its power to emotionally affect readers. Hence Mariachiara Leteo's choice to analyse their works through the lens of 'poetic effects': a set of textual strategies aimed at inviting the desired poetic response in the reader, within a specific cultural context. Instead of applying an external definition of 'poetry', Leteo reconstructs Woolf's and Cecchi's overlapping and diverging notions, and identifies different categories of poetic effects classified according to their intellectual and literary sources and/or the different experiences of 'poetry' they illuminate. The analysis shows poeticality to be an unstable and variegated spectrum, whose richness emerges more clearly through cross-cultural enquiries and the perspective of prose writers.

Mariachiara Leteo completed her DPhil in English at the University of Oxford in 2021, with a thesis in comparative literature focused on Virginia Woolf's and Emilio Cecchi's notions of 'poetry' in prose. She has worked as a tutor and guest lecturer in English, Italian, and Comparative Literature at different Oxford colleges and at the Department for Continuing Education, where she is now Departmental Tutor.