Design, Craft and Writing: Literature and the Practices of Decoration in the Late Victorian Cultural Scene
The title of my dissertation is Design, Craft and Writing: Literature and the Practices of Decoration in the Late Victorian Cultural Scene. The project aims at the development of the possible conceptual potential and relevance of the terms craft and design, as concepts that are able to express non-interpretative, corporeal encounters with the world, as well as terms (like writing) that are able to manage transitions between art and the everyday. This could gain relevance as a possible answer to the recent textual and discourse-oriented past of the humanities. This theoretical project is embedded historically in the late Victorian era, where these concepts emerged (or were invented) and guided the ‘discourse of decoration’ formulated between Aestheticism/Decadence and the Arts & Crafts movement. My dissertation aims to show how various practices of decoration (interior design, clothing and book decoration) were represented in various literary works, as well as how the book as a material object itself was intertwined with these practices.
Fach: Anglistik