The body is a voyage: Gender, Thought and Metaphor In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.

This study revisits the often discussed voyage metaphor in Virginia Woolf within a theoretical framework interconnecting some recent strands in Cognitive Semantics (and precisely conceptual metaphor theory), Gender Theory (particularly, the concept of embodiment), and Postcolonial Studies (especially the hypothesis of a third space of enunciation). The discussion revolves around the category of embodied subjectivity, central to all of these theoretical stances, attempting to harness their insights in order to further explore the novel by Virginia Woolf, Orlando. Departing from the premise of Conceptual Metaphor theory, which claims that conceptualization and consequently discourse is grounded in metaphorically-represented physical experience, the study identifies a primary metaphor in Orlando, and namely THE BODY IS A VOYAGE, which is suggested to have an epistemological function. From the point of view of gender theory, and especially the theorization of embodiment and gendered performativity, which claims that gender is grounded in ideologically-motivated social constructions, the study emphasizes the critique in Orlando of the naturally genderized body. Finally a stance emerging from Bhabba’s theory of the third space, an “in-between” site of negotiation of discursive and social power, completes an interpretation of Orlando as a rejection of preconceived binaries and boundaries at the service of Western patriarchy. However, the discussion will also reveal how this 1928 novel innovatively anticipates these theories confirming the status of Virginia Woolf as a seminal thinker of contemporary culture.