Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry : An Imagist Turned Philosopher

Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry examines representations of philosophical discourses in Modernist women's writing. Philosophers argued in the early twentieth century for an understanding of the self as both corporeal and relational, shaped and reshaped by interactions within a community. The once clear distinction between self and other was increasingly called into question. This breakdown of boundaries between self and world often manifested in the style of early twentieth-century literary works. Modernist poetry, like stream of consciousness fiction, used metaphor, sound, and a revision of received grammatical structures to blur the boundaries between the individual and collective. This book explores the ways that feminist writers like Mina Loy, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Marianne Moore used style and technique to respond to these philosophical debates, reclaiming agency over a predominantly male philosophical discourse. While many critics have addressed the thematic content of these writers' work, few scholars have taken up this question while focusing on the style of the writing. This book shows how these feminist poets used seemingly small stylistic choices in poetry to make necessary contributions to contemporary philosophical discourses, ultimately rendering these philosophical conversations more inclusive. Cover 1 Half Title Page 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Introduction 10 Modernist Poetry, Feminisms, and Philosophy: An Abbreviated Literature Survey 11 Democratizing Philosophy and the Forms of Academic Writing: Possibilities, Perspectives, and Stylistic Approaches 14 Methodology 16 Toward a Poetics of “Conversity” 17 Notes 18 Chapter 1: Reclaiming the Intellectual Agency of Women 20 Marianne Moore and the James Family 23 Pragmatist Philosophy, Appropriation, and Affect in Moore’s Early Poems, 1909–1924 25 Marianne Moore as Editor of The Dial, 1925–1929 28 Marianne Moore after The Dial, 1930–1944 30 Moore as Curator, 1916–1944 35 Marianne Moore, Her Later Poems, and Elizabeth Bishop 37 Conclusion 38 Notes 40 Chapter 2: “Each Alone Would Have Left Us to Our Dreams” 44 H.D., the Pool Group, and Psychoanalysis 46 Close-Up, the Image, and Debates about Sound Technology 49 Case in Point: Monkeys’ Moon 49 Borderline: The Cinematic Image as Dream Image 51 H.D. after the Pool Group Disbands: The Poetic Image as Freudian Symbol 52 The Veil as False Consciousness: Montage as an Emblem for the Psyche 54 The Veil as Dream-State: Montage as Complicating Meaning 55 The Veil as Memory: Sound Motifs as Enacting Meaning 57 Navigating Egypt: Psychic Landscapes, Memory, and Place 59 Conclusion 61 Appendix: Film Stills from Monkeys’ Moon 63 Notes 64 Chapter 3: Gertrude Stein 68 Stein, James, and Bergson: Inferences and Intersections 70 Grammar, Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy, and the Subversion of Reason 74 Language, Gender, and the Self in Tender Buttons 78 Rhetoric, Culture, and the Individual Consciousness: Tender Buttons and Three Lives 81 Grammar and the Cultural Machine: Tender Buttons and The Making of Americans 85 Conclusion 88 Notes 89 Chapter 4: Mina Loy 92 Loy and Stein: Inferences, Intersections 94 Early Twentieth Century Avant-Garde Communities and the Dissemination of Knowledge 98 Arthur Cravan: The Politicization of Language, Grammar, and Domestic Spaces 101 Reason, Grammar, and Sexual Difference 105 Conclusion 109 Notes 110 Conclusion 114 Feminism(s) as a Subversion of Reason 114 Modernist Women’s Writing and Late Twentieth Century Feminist Theory 116 Modernism as a Renegotiation of the Terms of Academic Discourse 119 Notes 120 Works Cited 122 Index 130 About the Author 132 "This critical study examines representations of philosophy in Modernist women's writing. Through the poetry of H.D., Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, and Marianne Moore, this book shows how feminist writers used seemingly small stylistic choices to make necessary contributions to predominantly male philosophical discourses, ultimately rendering these conversations more inclusive"-- Provided by publisher