UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO DIPARTIMENTO DI LINGUE E LETTERATURE STRANIERE DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN LINGUE, LETTERATURE E CULTURE STRANIERE XXVIII Ciclo BETWEEN RHETORIC AND PERFORMATIVITY THE VERBAL AND VISUAL ART OF FOUR MODERNIST WOMEN Tesi di dottorato di: Francesca Chiappini R09991 Tutor: Chiar.ma Prof.ssa Caroline Patey Coordinatore del Dottorato: Chiar.ma Prof.ssa Giuliana Garzone Anno Accademico 2014/2015 To my husband Table of contents Acknowledgments v List of figures vii Chronologies xiii PART I Introduction 1 1. The corpus 3 2. Some methodological considerations 4 2.1. Visual modernity and urban aesthetics 5 2.1.1. Views on modernity 9 2.2. Recent feminist insights 13 2.3. Gendered spaces, gender practices 15 2.4. Performers 20 2.5. The relevance of life-writing 23 2.5.1. From subjectivity to collective consciousness 26 2.6. Life-painting 30 PART II Chapter 1. Form, space and colour 33 1.1. Djuna Barnes’s poetic fait divers 34 1.1.2. Patterns of fall 37 1.1.3. Metamorphic spaces: black and white 43 1.1.4. Synecdoche and the poetics of dismemberment 48 1.2. Zelda’s waltz 52 1.2.1. Fairy-tale colours: hyperboles 53 1.2.1.1.Visual prose 61 1.2.2. Nightmarish colours: plethora and horror vacui 62 1.2.2.1.In excess 67 1.2.2.2.“The vertigo of the list” 69 1.3. Mina Loy’s essential lines 71 1.3.1. Geometrical fascinations 72 1.3.2. Access-line to avant-garde 76 1.3.3. Gendered geometries 81 1.3.4. The rhetoric of gendered line 85 1.4. The Baroness’s erotic corpus 86 1.4.1. Illuminated manuscripts 88 1.4.2. Colouring the verse 93 1.4.3. From idiosyncrasies to hypotyposis 99 1.5. Unaffiliated aesthetics 101 Chapter 2. The lure of the city 103 2.1. Close-ups and snapshots in Djuna Barnes 104 2.1.1. The female Spectator 105 2.1.2. Rhetorical implications 108 2.1.3. Frames: from journalism to fiction 113 2.1.4. Theory and praxis of urban walking 120 2.2. Zelda Fitzgerald’s second birth 122 2.2.1. Subverted perspectives 124 2.2.2. Beyond the frame 128 2.2.3. Hypotaxis and palimpsest: the architecture of vision 133 2.2.4. Urbanised prose 134 2.3. Modern simulacra: Loy’s urban myths 138 2.3.1. Disorienting architectures, degenerate myths 139 2.3.2. Frames and dissolution 146 2.3.3. Haunting city, haunted language 152 2.4. The Baroness’s physical poetry 155 2.4.1. Sexualised city, mechanised body 155 2.4.2. Urbanised language 163 2.4.3. Urbanised faces 169 2.5. Metropolitan paradigms 172 Chapter 3. Remediating the self-portrait 175 3.1. Fraught autobiographies and self-construction 179 3.1.1. Attempts at self-portraits: masquerades 182 3.2. Fiction: proliferation of masks 187 3.2.1. Backfiring alibis: masks in Barnes’s Nightwood 188 3.2.1.1.Masks and space, enclosure and transition 193 3.2.2. Auto/biographical traps in Loy’s Insel 197 3.2.2.1.Delusion, trust and treason 201 3.3. From performance to performativity 204 3.3.1. Issues of genre and gender in women’s modernist theatre 205 3.3.1.1.Disrupting drama: Loy’s The Pamperers 208 3.3.1.2.Appropriating autobiography: Barnes’s The Antiphon 212 3.3.2. Transitions 219 3.4. Into performativity 220 3.4.1. From life-writing to self-staging: Alabama and Zelda 222 3.4.2. A dramatic identity: the Baroness 226 3.4.2.1.Shocking Elsa: gender matters 227 3.4.2.2. Psychogenesis of the Baroness as poet 234 3.4.2.3.New York masks and performative poems 237 3.4.2.4.The final performance of Mamadada 244 Conclusions 249 Bibliography 251 Acknowledgments With genuine pleasure, I wish to thank various people for their contribution to this project, both inside and outside the University of Milan; without their help, support and advice, this work would have not been possible, nor would it have been so fruitful. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Caroline Patey, my research supervisor and tutor at the University of Milan, for her deep and eclectic knowledge, enthusiastic encouragement and useful critiques. Her comments have been fundamental for a convincing arrangement of contents, structuring of the comparative settings, and critical grounding of my approach. Her appreciation of the final work is an incredibly valuable result for me. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Emma Wilson, of the University of Cambridge, for her constructive suggestions during the planning and development of this research. Under her guidance I spent my second year of research at the University of Cambridge, where I could enrich my theoretical background and sharpen my critical thinking, thanks to the unlimited availability of library resources. Professor Wilson’s constant support, motivation and friendliness accompanied my work throughout. I also felt honoured beyond words when Professor Irene Gammel, Ryerson University of Toronto – on whose extensive work I based my every reading of the Baroness’s corpus – expressed to me her appreciation of my ideas and considerations, and supported me by endeavouring to find opportunities to collaborate with her in the upcoming future. Besides my academic advisors, I would like to thank Rachel C. Franks, who is just about to complete her degree in Classics at the University of Cambridge. Without her proofreading my arguments would probably not sound as convincing, and my phrasing would not be as neat. Her insightful comments, encouragement, and friendship have been precious for my work, and I cannot imagine a better critical reader. Thanks to Philippa Buckley, also a Cambridge graduate, whose last-minute proofreading has been of perfect timing and help. My fondest gratitude goes to my family. To my husband, who – beside having patiently read my work looking for typos – supported me in the several moments when I v felt overwhelmed, and when I could not find the necessary concentration. His patience while I was away for research, his love and firm faith in me, which he expressed to me every minute, were invaluable. Thanks to my mother, father and sister, who believed in me as I first engaged in this PhD, and celebrate with me today for having completed it. My gratefulness also goes to my best friends (and bridesmaids), Cristina Berti and Francesca Maino, who, despite distance, backed me up when I did not feel in my best shape, and ignited me with positive energy every time we were on the phone – thanks to Skype. And thanks to Elizabeth Wyatt, dearest friend and best travel companion, who so many times had me as a guest when I had to do research at the British Library in London. Her kind words and caring made me feel beloved on my research trips – and on our leisure trips too. And thanks to Elesse Eddy, whose supportiveness and liveliness so often injected me with optimism and can-do-spirit, thus helping me to put things into perspective. Last but not least, I must thank my fellow PhD students of the Department of English at the University of Milan, particularly Marco Canani, in whose company the long afternoons at the Faculty were enjoyable, and Adele Tiengo, with whom I shared these stressful but immensely rewarding few final months of work. vi List of Figures A: By Djuna Barnes, Zelda Fitzgerald, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Mina Loy in alphabetical and chronological order. Barnes, Djuna, 1913, “The Tingling, Tangling Tango as ‘Tis Tripped at Coney Isle,” ink on paper, in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, (31 August 1913). Source: New York, ed. Alyce Barry (London: Virago Press). ______, 1913, “Thomas Baird” and “Dan Sheen,” from Veterans in Harness, ink and pencil on paper, in Brooklyn Daily Eagle (12 October – 14 December 1913). ______, 1914, “Though He Is a Diamond in the Rough You Can’t Get Away from Him Without Taking a Memory You Are Not Likely to Forget,” ink on paper, in New York Press, (10 May 1914). Source: Poe’s Mother. Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes, ed. Douglas Messerli (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1995). ______,1915, “Irvin Cobb,” ink of paper, in New York Press, (28 March 1915. Source: Poe’s Mother. Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes, ed. Douglas Messerli (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1995). ______,1915, The Book of Repulsive Women. Ink on paper. Source: The Book of Repulsive Women. 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings, Djuna Barnes (Manchester: Carcanet, 2003). ______,1917, “Strange Forms Crying to One Another on the Beach,” ink on paper, in New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, (15 July 1917). Source: New York, ed. Alyce Barry (London: Virago Press). ______, 1919, Self-Portrait. Ink on paper, in Pearson’s Magazine XLV, (December 1919). Source: Poe’s Mother. Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes, ed. Douglas Messerli (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1995). ______,1928, Ryder. Charcoal pencil on paper. Source: Ryder, Djuna Barnes (Champaign; London: Dakley Archive Press, 2010). Fitzgerald, Zelda, 1925-1940, Self-Portrait. Watercolour, at “F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum,” Montgomery, AL. Source: Zelda: An Illustrated Life. The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald, eds. Eleanor Lanahan et al. (New York: Abrams, 1996). ______, 1940s, Central Park. Gouache on paper (53 x 41,3 cm), at “F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum,” Montgomery, AL. Source: Zelda: An Illustrated Life. The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald, eds. Eleanor Lanahan et al. (New York: Abrams, 1996).