Virginia Woolf - Objects, Things, Matter
Published on 31. May 2025
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-3995-1700-3 (ISBN)
Description
Virginia Woolf's deep and creative interest in materiality is not only illuminated by but precedes current theorisations of objects, things and matter - among them, new materialism, object-oriented ontology and thing theory. Through both critical and creative engagements, contributors explore the possibilities and limitations of these theoretical accounts: what new readings they afford; what they say that Woolf has already shown us; and how Woolf goes beyond or can't be fully captured by these ideas. This volume thus gathers various, sometimes even contradictory, approaches on the topic; in turn, it emphasises congruences and tensions in theoretical, literary and cultural interpretations of Woolf's material investments. What emerges in Virginia Woolf - Objects, Things, Matter is an account of how Woolf reveals things to be vital, active and strange by refiguring the relationship between subject and object and, at times, even inverting, subverting or redefining those very terms.
Reviews / Votes
This exciting collection constitutes an important landmark in work on Woolf and materiality. Mattison's innovatively structured volume offers a vivid diversity of viewpoints and approaches, including theoretically focused essays, creative responses and close readings which collectively animate as never before Woolf's engagement with things, objects and matter. -- Bryony Randall, University of Glasgow Thinking through things has been fundamental to twenty-first century modernist studies so far. Deploying this new work in diverse ways, the pieces in Laci Mattison's collection do things of their own with the matters and objects to be found in Woolf's writing. A thought-provoking assemblage. -- Rachel Bowlby, University College LondonMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
14 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
626 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-1700-3 (9781399517003)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Laci Mattison is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University. She is a Series Editor for Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism and co-editor of Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (2014); Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (2013); and The Routledge Companion to Virginia Woolf (forthcoming 2026).
Content
List of Figures
Note on the Cover
Acknowledgements
Series Preface
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Virginia Woolf - Objects, Things, Matter
Laci Mattison
Part I. Approaches to Objects, Things and Matter in Woolf
1. Virginia Woolf and Modernist New Materialism
Derek Ryan
2. Jacob's Im/material Form
Geoff Bender
3. Inanimacy: Virginia Woolf's Materialisms
Maurizia Boscagli
4. 'Of being herself invisible': Object, Thing, Matter and Use in Mrs Dalloway and Three Guineas
Ann Martin
5. A Toy Boat of Her Own: Gender, Play and Education in Virginia Woolf's Writings
Imola Nagy-Seres
6. Cotton, Race, Embodiment and 'the thing itself' in Woolf
Jane Garrity
7. Virginia Woolf's Misuse of 'Cotton Wool' in 'A Sketch of the Past': Writing the Wound
Davi Pinho
Part II. Object Experiments with Woolf
8. Object Lessons
Shilo McGiff
9. Material Reading: Letterpress Printing with Woolf
Ane Thon Knutsen
10. The Life of Monday or Tuesday
Jane Goldman
11. More Surfaces: A Monologue, or the Queer Interiorities of a Gramophone
James Brock
12. six
Erik Fuhrer
13. Spider Kingdom
Brandi George
Part III. A Collection of Woolfian Things
14. The Jug in the Borderland
Douglas Mao
15. 'Enjoying this Immortal Rhythm': Woolf and the Gramophone
Aimee Gasston
16. The Ghostly Pencil
Graham Fraser
17. 'tremb tremulous fitful': Missed Encounters in Mirrors
Melissa Alexander
18. The 'Vanished' Walrus Pen-Wiper: Waste and the Animal Object
Laci Mattison
19. Pointz Hall as Hyperobject: Woolf's Deep Geological History in Between the Acts
Leanna Lostoski-Ho
Afterword: Upheavals of Matter
Bill Brown
Index
Note on the Cover
Acknowledgements
Series Preface
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Virginia Woolf - Objects, Things, Matter
Laci Mattison
Part I. Approaches to Objects, Things and Matter in Woolf
1. Virginia Woolf and Modernist New Materialism
Derek Ryan
2. Jacob's Im/material Form
Geoff Bender
3. Inanimacy: Virginia Woolf's Materialisms
Maurizia Boscagli
4. 'Of being herself invisible': Object, Thing, Matter and Use in Mrs Dalloway and Three Guineas
Ann Martin
5. A Toy Boat of Her Own: Gender, Play and Education in Virginia Woolf's Writings
Imola Nagy-Seres
6. Cotton, Race, Embodiment and 'the thing itself' in Woolf
Jane Garrity
7. Virginia Woolf's Misuse of 'Cotton Wool' in 'A Sketch of the Past': Writing the Wound
Davi Pinho
Part II. Object Experiments with Woolf
8. Object Lessons
Shilo McGiff
9. Material Reading: Letterpress Printing with Woolf
Ane Thon Knutsen
10. The Life of Monday or Tuesday
Jane Goldman
11. More Surfaces: A Monologue, or the Queer Interiorities of a Gramophone
James Brock
12. six
Erik Fuhrer
13. Spider Kingdom
Brandi George
Part III. A Collection of Woolfian Things
14. The Jug in the Borderland
Douglas Mao
15. 'Enjoying this Immortal Rhythm': Woolf and the Gramophone
Aimee Gasston
16. The Ghostly Pencil
Graham Fraser
17. 'tremb tremulous fitful': Missed Encounters in Mirrors
Melissa Alexander
18. The 'Vanished' Walrus Pen-Wiper: Waste and the Animal Object
Laci Mattison
19. Pointz Hall as Hyperobject: Woolf's Deep Geological History in Between the Acts
Leanna Lostoski-Ho
Afterword: Upheavals of Matter
Bill Brown
Index