VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ESSAY ON BEING ILL AND GRAHAM SWIFT’S ESSAY SANTA’S CLINIC: VIEWS ON FICTION
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ESSAY ON BEING ILL AND GRAHAM SWIFT’S ESSAY SANTA’S CLINIC: VIEWS ON FICTION

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of the present paper is to compare Virginia Woolf’s and Graham Swift’s essays, On Being Ill and Santa’s Clinic, respectively, in order to discover a new type of essay, from a formal point of view. These two essays selected for thorough analysis are not the usual, realistic, argumentative essays. Apparently, both argue in favour of their opinions on fiction and its relevance to the readers, but this meaning of their essays comes at a second level, which is the result of the deepening arguments and of the readers’ interpretation. Both essays start reflections which lead to this deeper level interpretation from the subject of illness, in general, in Woolf’s essay, and from the specific case of the polio vaccine, in Swift’s essay. The genre to which these essays belong can be seen as a mixture between argumentative essay, personal opinion essay, diary writing, free associations method from psychoanalysis, and metafiction, or writing about the very process of writing.

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