Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Matter of Modernity: Art, Aesthetics, Materiality

Prompted by the sustained interest in material culture within the humanities and social sciences, this thesis represents an effort to track the fascination with a world of objects in the modernist literature and art of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. This study encompasses the literary, visual, and plastic arts, focusing on individual works that disclose the force of inanimate objects within human experience. Engaging in a wide-ranging discussion of fiction and painting, photography and interior design, this study aims to provoke a renewed and revigorated understanding of the affinities between early twentieth century art and aesthetics and the material object world.