ABSTRACT
This chapter asks how the sense experiences evoked by modernist short stories and their evocations of materiality translates into making sense of the world at a basic, affective level as well as a critical, interpretive one. The first subchapter focuses on Jean Rhys’s collection The Left Bank and discusses how its evocations of things and people as masses invite the reader to engage with a blend of aesthetical, ethical, and affective sense making. The second part discusses the beginnings of two of Katherine Mansfield’s stories as an example of the way her work uses perception and perspective to challenge ontological categories, and how this, too, is conductive to ethical and critical interpretations. Finally, the focus is on Djuna Barnes’s story “Cassation,” which is read for its abundant material detail and the way it evokes a variety of both cultural contexts and symbolic meanings, while acknowledging that these meanings, too, rest on the materiality encountered by the reader.
