Modernist Short Fiction and Things

Description

This book reappraises the philosophical value of short fiction by Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen, examining the stories through the lens of specific everyday objects. Looking at Woolf and armchairs, Mansfield and snack food, and Bowen and fashion accessories, it probes the aesthetic resonance between these stories’ form and contents and also considers the modes of thinking they might promote. Conceiving of their short fiction as intrinsically radical and experimental even within a wider context of modernist innovation, this book shows how these important women writers brought quotidian objects to riotous life, in such a way that tasked readers with reevaluating their everyday existence. Overall, Modernist Short Fiction and Things argues that short fiction epitomises modernist aesthetics, functioning as a resonant source for investigation and complementing and expanding our understanding of modernist epistemology. Acknowledgements Contents Note on Quotations List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Modernist Short Fiction, the Canon and Criticism Short Fiction Practice Modernist Literature, Everyday Things Snacks, Armchairs, Hats and Gloves Chapter 2: Virginia Woolf’s Armchair Aesthetics Mental Furniture The Armchair Critic and Critical Reading Short Fiction as Armchair Literature ‘The Mark on the Wall’: Armchair Phenomenology The View from the Armchair Against Taxonomy Reading Beyond the Page ‘Sympathy’ and ‘A Summing Up’: Armchairs, Stories and ‘Being-Toward-Death’ ‘Solid Objects’: The Democracy of Matter Concluding Remarks: Armchair Phenomenology Chapter 3: Snacks and Katherine Mansfield Hors-d’oeuvres: The Life Beside the Work Literary Fodder A Thousand Leaves, with Cream: Tea with Oscar Wilde Mansfield’s Aesthetics: Re-creation and the Story-Snack Stories, Snacks, Scraps Short Rations Bliss: Food for Thought Abstention and Rot Imaginative Snacking Preludes Creative Objects and Illuminating Experience Dismantling the Victorian Meal: The Garden Party and Illicit Snacks Cream Puffs and Bread and Butter Chocolate Cake, Prepared Foods and Eggs in Various Forms Concluding Remarks: Aftertaste Chapter 4: Elizabeth Bowen and Eccentric Accessories Accessories, Stories and the Dangerous Supplement Detail, Women and War Eccentric Reading Hats Angry Ghosts and Fairy Godmothers: ‘Pink May’ and ‘Fairies at the Christening’ ‘Ann Lee’s’: Eccentric Logic Gloves Clues Coming Home? Gloves and Creative Reading ‘Dead Mabelle’: Reading the Periphery ‘A Love Story’: Eccentric Meaning ‘The Girl with the Stoop’: Fortune Telling and Passive Reading ‘The Demon Lover’ and ‘Hand in Glove’: Reading Crimes and Punishment Concluding Remarks: Eccentric Reading Chapter 5: Conclusion: Stories and Their Objects—Reading and Being Last Thoughts List of Abbreviations Books Libraries Bibliography Index