GERTRUDE STEIN and the MAKING of LITERATURE Also by Shirley Neuman
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Nabokov and the Detective Novel
CATHARINE THEIMER NEPOMNYASHCHY NABOKOV AND THE DETECTIVE NOVEL atharine Theimer Nepomnyash- was left unfinished at her death. Cathy chy, Ann Whitney Olin Profes- proposed to investigate more thoroughly sor of Russian Literature and and inventively Nabokov’s enemies (Freud, C Culture, Barnard College, and Pasternak, the detective novel) to see former director of the Harriman Institute, whether his blistering invective obfuscated died on March 21 of this year. (An obitu- a deeper engagement with said enemies. ary is printed at the end of the magazine.) Although we can only guess at the work’s Cathy first taught the Nabokov survey at final shape, conference papers from 2010 Columbia in the fall of 2007 (I remember onwards offer glimpses of a potential table because I taught the second class), and the of contents: Nabokov and Pasternak; following year she published her first arti- Pale Fire and Doctor Zhivago: A Case of cle on Nabokov, “King, Queen, Sui-mate: Intertextual Envy; Ada and Bleak House ; Nabokov’s Defense Against Freud’s Un- Nabokov and Austen; Nabokov and the canny” (Intertexts, Spring 2008), the first Art of Attack. brick of what was planned to be “Nabokov The essay that follows is what we and His Enemies,” which unfortunately have of the second brick of Cathy’s 48 | HARRIMAN FEATURED INTRODUCTION BY RONALD MEYER work-in-progress, “Revising Nabokov needs to keep in mind that what follows is Revising the Detective Novel: Vladimir, a conference presentation and that Cathy Agatha, and the Terms of Engagement,” was writing within the constraints of time which Cathy presented at the 2010 Inter- and length, but one cannot but regret its national Nabokov Conference, sponsored preliminary state and wonder what was to by the Nabokov Society of Japan and the come in a fully expanded version. -
If I Told Him Stein + Picasso
If I Told Him By Gertrude Stein If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him. Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it. If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him. Now. Not now. And now. Now. Exactly as as kings. Feeling full for it. Exactitude as kings. So to beseech you as full as for it. Exactly or as kings. Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also. Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because. Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all. Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all. I judge judge. As a resemblance to him. Who comes first. Napoleon the first. Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet. -
A Humble Protest a Literary Generation's Quest for The
A HUMBLE PROTEST A LITERARY GENERATION’S QUEST FOR THE HEROIC SELF, 1917 – 1930 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jason A. Powell, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2008 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Steven Conn, Adviser Professor Paula Baker Professor David Steigerwald _____________________ Adviser Professor George Cotkin History Graduate Program Copyright by Jason Powell 2008 ABSTRACT Through the life and works of novelist John Dos Passos this project reexamines the inter-war cultural phenomenon that we call the Lost Generation. The Great War had destroyed traditional models of heroism for twenties intellectuals such as Ernest Hemingway, Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos, compelling them to create a new understanding of what I call the “heroic self.” Through a modernist, experience based, epistemology these writers deemed that the relationship between the heroic individual and the world consisted of a dialectical tension between irony and romance. The ironic interpretation, the view that the world is an antagonistic force out to suppress individual vitality, drove these intellectuals to adopt the Freudian conception of heroism as a revolt against social oppression. The Lost Generation rebelled against these pernicious forces which they believed existed in the forms of militarism, patriotism, progressivism, and absolutism. The -
“The First Futurist Manifesto Revisited,” Rett Kopi: Manifesto Issue: Dokumenterer Fremtiden (2007): 152- 56. Marjorie Perl
“The First Futurist Manifesto Revisited,” Rett Kopi: Manifesto issue: Dokumenterer Fremtiden (2007): 152- 56. Marjorie Perloff Almost a century has passed since the publication, in the Paris Figaro on 20 February 1909, of a front-page article by F. T. Marinetti called “Le Futurisme” which came to be known as the First Futurist Manifesto [Figure 1]. Famous though this manifesto quickly became, it was just as quickly reviled as a document that endorsed violence, unbridled technology, and war itself as the “hygiene of the people.” Nevertheless, the 1909 manifesto remains the touchstone of what its author called l’arte di far manifesti (“the art of making manifestos”), an art whose recipe—“violence and precision,” “the precise accusation and the well-defined insult”—became the impetus for all later manifesto-art.1 The publication of Günter Berghaus’s comprehensive new edition of Marinetti’s Critical Writings2 affords an excellent opportunity to reconsider the context as well as the rhetoric of Marinetti’s astonishing document. Consider, for starters, that the appearance of the manifesto, originally called Elettricismo or Dinamismo—Marinetti evidently hit on the more general title Futurismo while making revisions in December 2008-- was delayed by an unforeseen event that took place at the turn of 1909. On January 2, 200,000 people were killed in an earthquake in Sicily. As Berghaus tells us, Marinetti realized that this was hardly an opportune moment for startling the world with a literary manifesto, so he delayed publication until he could be sure he would get front-page coverage for his incendiary appeal to lay waste to cultural traditions and institutions. -
Gertrude Stein and Her Audience: Small Presses, Little Magazines, and the Reconfiguration of Modern Authorship
GERTRUDE STEIN AND HER AUDIENCE: SMALL PRESSES, LITTLE MAGAZINES, AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF MODERN AUTHORSHIP KALI MCKAY BACHELOR OF ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE, 2006 A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS Department of English University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Kali McKay, 2010 Abstract: This thesis examines the publishing career of Gertrude Stein, an American expatriate writer whose experimental style left her largely unpublished throughout much of her career. Stein’s various attempts at dissemination illustrate the importance she placed on being paid for her work and highlight the paradoxical relationship between Stein and her audience. This study shows that there was an intimate relationship between literary modernism and mainstream culture as demonstrated by Stein’s need for the public recognition and financial gains by which success had long been measured. Stein’s attempt to embrace the definition of the author as a professional who earned a living through writing is indicative of the developments in art throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, and it problematizes modern authorship by re- emphasizing the importance of commercial success to artists previously believed to have been indifferent to the reaction of their audience. iii Table of Contents Title Page ………………………………………………………………………………. i Signature Page ………………………………………………………………………… ii Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………….. iii Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………….. iv Chapter One …………………………………………………………………………..... 1 Chapter Two ………………………………………………………………………….. 26 Chapter Three ………………………………………………………………………… 47 Chapter Four .………………………………………………………………………... 66 Works Cited .………………………………………………………………………….. 86 iv Chapter One Hostile readers of Gertrude Stein’s work have frequently accused her of egotism, claiming that she was a talentless narcissist who imposed her maunderings on the public with an undeserved sense of self-satisfaction. -
THE LITERARY CRITICISM of EDMUND WILSON by Mervin
TRADITION AND ISOLATION: THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF EDMUND WILSON by Mervin Butovsky A the sis submitted to the Faculty of G r aduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Mas ter of Arts. D e partment of English, M c Gill Univer s ity, M ontreal. A p r il 1961 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction 1 Chapter I Wilson's Cultural Tradition and Li.terary Career 13 Chapter II The Cost of Aestheticism: Llterature and Social Responsibility 47 Chapter III The Context of History: Marxism and Literary Values 67 Chapter IV The Context of Biography: Psychology and Literary Creation 86 Conclusion 111 Notes 121 List of Works Consulted 139 1 INTRODUCTION The position of Edmund Wilson is unique among critics on the American literary scene. For over three decades he has been considered one of America's leading critics of literature and i.s doubtless, as Stanley Edgar Hyman observes, "the most widely known 1 of our critics. " In an age when literary criticism has become greatly specialized and has tended to find its audience for the most part in academie circles, Edmund Wilson stands out as the only critic whose reputation is based upon critical acceptance by both the intellectuals and the broad literate reading public. Through the years his writings have been published in the avant-garde literary "little magazines" as well as the mass-circulated popular publications, 2 and unlike other prominent critics of literature, the majority of whom are teachers by profession, Wilson sees his writings as "the record of a journalist"3 and speaks of himself as belonging to the "serious profession of journalism. -
The Radical Ekphrasis of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons Georgia Googer University of Vermont
University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM Graduate College Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 2018 The Radical Ekphrasis Of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons Georgia Googer University of Vermont Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis Recommended Citation Googer, Georgia, "The Radical Ekphrasis Of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons" (2018). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 889. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/889 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate College Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE RADICAL EKPHRASIS OF GERTRUDE STEIN’S TENDER BUTTONS A Thesis Presented by Georgia Googer to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Specializing in English May, 2018 Defense Date: March 21, 2018 Thesis Examination Committee: Mary Louise Kete, Ph.D., Advisor Melanie S. Gustafson, Ph.D., Chairperson Eric R. Lindstrom, Ph.D. Cynthia J. Forehand, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate College ABSTRACT This thesis offers a reading of Gertrude Stein’s 1914 prose poetry collection, Tender Buttons, as a radical experiment in ekphrasis. A project that began with an examination of the avant-garde imagism movement in the early twentieth century, this thesis notes how Stein’s work differs from her Imagist contemporaries through an exploration of material spaces and objects as immersive sensory experiences. This thesis draws on late twentieth century attempts to understand and define ekphrastic poetry before turning to Tender Buttons. -
To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson
TO THE FINLAND STATION EDMUND WILSON INTRODUCTION BY LOUIS MENAND NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS CLASSICS TO THE FINLAND STATION EDMUND WILSON (1895–1972) is widely regarded as the preeminent American man of letters of the twentieth century. Over his long career, he wrote for Vanity Fair, helped edit The New Republic, served as chief book critic for The New Yorker, and was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Wilson was the author of more than twenty books, including Axel’s Castle, Patriotic Gore, and a work of fiction, Memoirs of Hecate County. LOUIS MENAND is Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Meta- physical Club, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize in 2002, and American Studies, a collection of essays. TO THE FINLAND STATION A STUDY IN THE WRITING AND ACTING OF HISTORY EDMUND WILSON Foreword by LOUIS MENAND new york review books nyrb New York This is a New York Review Book Published by The New York Review of Books 1755 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 Copyright 1940 by Harcourt Brace & Co., Inc., renewed 1967 by Edmund Wilson. New introduction and revisions copyright © 1972 by the Estate of Edmund Wilson. Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Introduction copyright © 2003 by Louis Menand All rights reserved Marxism at the End of the Thirties, from The Shores of Light, copyright 1952 by Edmund Wilson Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc., Publishers. -
Ida, a [Performative] Novel and the Construction of Id/Entity
Wesleyan University The Honors College Ida, A [Performative] Novel and the Construction of Id/Entity by Katherine Malczewski Class of 2015 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Theater Middletown, Connecticut April, 2015 Malczewski 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………..2 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………3 Stein’s Theoretical Framework………………………………………………………..4 Stein’s Writing Process and Techniques……………………………………………..12 Ida, A Novel: Context and Textual Analysis………………………………...……….17 Stein’s Theater, the Aesthetics of the Performative, and the Actor’s Work in Ida…………………………………………………25 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...40 Notes…………………………………………………………………………………41 Appendix: Adaptation of Ida, A Novel……………………………....………………44 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………….56 Malczewski 2 Acknowledgments Many thanks to all the people who have supported me throughout this process: To my director, advisor, and mentor, Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento. You ignited my passion for both the works of Gertrude Stein and “weird” theater during my freshman year by casting me in Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights. Since then, you have offered me with invaluable guidance and insight, teaching me that the process is just as important as the performance. I am eternally grateful for all the time and energy you have dedicated to this project. To the Wesleyan Theater Department, for guiding me throughout my four years at Wesleyan, encouraging me to embrace collaboration, and making the performance of Ida, A Novel possible. Special thanks to Marcela Oteíza and Leslie Weinberg, for your help and advice during the process of Ida. To my English advisors, Courtney Weiss Smith and Rachel Ellis Neyra, for challenging me to think critically and making me a better writer in the process. -
Fence Above the Sea Brigitte Byrd
Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Fence Above the Sea Brigitte Byrd Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FENCE ABOVE THE SEA Name: Brigitte Byrd Department: English Major Professor: David Kirby Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Term Degree Awarded: Summer, 2003 “Fence above the Sea” is a collection of prose poems written in sequences. Writing in the line of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Lynn Hejinian, I experiment with language and challenge its convention. While Dickinson writes about “the landscape of the soul,” I write about the landscape of the mind. While she appropriates and juxtaposes words in a strange fashion, I juxtapose fragments of sentences in a strange fashion. While she uses dashes to display silence, I discard punctuation, which is disruptive and limits the reader to a set reading of the sentence. Except for the period. Stein’s writing is the epitome of Schklovsky’s concept of ostranenie (defamiliarization). Like her poems in Tender Buttons, my poems present a multiplied perspective. On the moment. Like Stein, I write dialogical poems where there is a dialogue among words and between words and their meanings. Also, I expect a dialogue between words and readers, author and readers, text and readers. My prose poems focus on sentences “with a balance of their own. the balance of space completely not filled but created by something moving as moving is not as moving should be” (Stein, “Poetry and Grammar”). Repetitions are essential in everyday life, to the thought process, and thus in this collection. -
Edmund Wilson's Chronicles Edwin Honig
New Mexico Quarterly Volume 24 | Issue 1 Article 15 1954 Edmund Wilson's Chronicles Edwin Honig Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq Recommended Citation Honig, Edwin. "Edmund Wilson's Chronicles." New Mexico Quarterly 24, 1 (1954). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol24/ iss1/15 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Mexico Press at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Quarterly by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Honig: Edmund Wilson's Chronicles BOOKS and COMMENT Edwin Honig EDMUND WILSON'S CHRONICLES1 DMUNDWIL SON is that rare sort of American writer, a master of prose style. This can probably be proved at E length from any of his ten books of critical and discursive pros~. His writing has no crotchets. It reads easily; it is often bril liant without being simply slick. He seems unwilling to let a dead or merely dull sentence slip by. Though occasionally his periods seem protracted. they easily pass scrutiny because they are not densely freighted or rhetorical and carry their weight of modifi ers and parentheses squarely. The right sense of conviction and discriminative zeal keeps them afloat. Such qua~ities are remark able enough even in a critic ofdeliberate intent who publishes only infrequently. But the example of Edmund Wilson, a literary journalist of thirty years standing whose work 'was composed for \ weeklies like The New Republicand The New Yorketr, has quali- tatively almost no precedent in our literature. -
Two Women in a Man's Art World
Two Women in a Man’s Art World by John Yau June 9, 2019 Marcia Marcus, “Self Portrait as Athena” (1973), oil and gold leaf on canvas, 58 x 36 inches, © 2019 Marcia Marcus, New York (courtesy Eric Firestone Gallery) You are not likely to find the work of Mimi Gross and Marcia Marcus in the permanent collections of any major New York City museum. I find that both predictable and troubling. I was reminded of the phrase, Other Traditions (2001), the collective title John Ashbery gave to the publication of his six Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University, when I was looking at Marcia Marcus’s grisaille portrait of “Edwin Dickinson” (1972) in the timely exhibition, Double Portrait: Mimi Gross and Marcia Marcus, at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (May 23–July 27, 2019), curated by Lisa Panzera. Twenty years before the publication of Other Traditions, Ashbery made the following observation about Dickinson in New York (October 13, 1980): Coming on this show fresh from Whitney’s [Edward] Hopper retrospective made me wonder once again if we really know who our greatest artists are. I would be the last to deny Hopper’s importance, but even in the smallest and most slapdash of these oil sketches, Dickinson seems to me a greater and more elevated painter, and all notions of “cerebralism” and “decadence” — two words critics throw around when they can’t find anything bad to say about an artist — are swept away by the freshness of these pictures, in which eeriness and vivacity seem to go hand in hand, as they do in our social life.