This dissertation explores the connections that exist between Gertrude Steins late nineteenth-century psychological studies at Harvard University, her fin-de-sicle brain research at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and her early twentieth-century cubist writings. This study is important to neuraesthetic researchers, because it appears that Stein produced a secret series of cubist brain maps from approximately 1912 to 1935, and then published her first explicit brain map in _The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind_, in 1936. The cubist brain maps that Stein produced during this period can be conceptualized as evolving, neuraesthetic writing practices that reflect her complex, scientific insights and her varied, artistic associations. One of the primary differences between Steins cubist writings and those of her literary peers is that she deploys the cubist painting strategies of Pablo Picasso, for the purpose of portraying the human central nervous system. In addition to exploring the scientific meanings of Steins multidimensional, performative and introspective cubist puns, my study examines how Stein uses color in her cubist writings, as a means of anticipating the visual effects of future scientific discoveries and connectivity maps, such as the Brainbow system, which uses the fluorescent protein from the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria to label the central nervous systems of genetically modified mice with distinguishable colors. Also, this project examines how Stein uses color words and other simple devices from the English language to illustrate the brains cellular structures, neural networks and neuroanatomical features. This studys primary aim is to explore how Steins dissociative writings function within western culture as neuraesthetic modes of masterpiece creation, brain representation and consciousness translation. Through the serial production of cubist brain maps, Stein posed important questions about the modern science of the reading brain. By developing allegorical methods of brain representation, Stein contributes to the western practice of neuroesthetics by foregrounding the role that creative writing plays in the production of imaginary, laboratory practices and imaginative, brain imaging technologies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1998. / UMI copy paged continuously. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-325).

By investigating the discursive rules of hermeneutics and diagnosis, this study seeks to problematize particular presuppositions—most notably the presupposition of sense—of the modern disciplinary hermeneutic context. Following Barthes's consideration of the Greek modus of the middle voice as a useful notion in conceptualizing the modern scene of writing, the study advances itself toward conceptualizing a configuration of the modern reading scene in its middle-voiced permutation. In such a scene, the moment a reading attempts to read itself from without its parameters, it arrives at a spatial and temporal crisis (from the Greek krin-ein; to decide) between its action and the place (of not sense and not not sense) which exceeds the parameters delimiting the action of reading itself, but which nevertheless conditions its possibility. The grammar of this crisis is the middle voice; its condition, in the context of this study, is configured as madness. Madness is thus configured as a function of interrogation, reading and diagnosis. At the nucleus of the modem reading scene itself, this thesis opens with an introduction of the terms middle voice, crisis and madness, and then offers a consideration of three permutations of reading: Chapter Two, Chapter Three and the space between. Chapter Two considers a fictional representation of writing in the middle voice through a reading of Nabokov's Lolita, a text of fiction in the form of a "mad writer's" diary, whose historical reception has been marked by acts of appropriative censorship and clinical diagnosis. Chapter Three considers a permutation of the middlevoiced reading through a reading of Gertrude Stein's lectures on writing. This consideration is framed by fragments from the writing of Maurice Blanchot, connecting reading (as conceived by Stein) to madness, figuring the convergence of reading and madness in writing. The Interchapter, between chapters Two and Three, is an aporetic space entitled "Madness Itself." By allowing a brief and partial view of the modem clinical psychiatric setting, and by calling into question the parameters of the surrounding "chapters" themselves, this section seeks to perform, structurally and thematically, a moment of crisis recalling the middle voice. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Comedy has typically been derided as second-tier to drama in all aspects of narrative. Throughout history, comedy has seen short shrift in both critical reception and academic investigation. Merit is simply placed on drama far before that of comedy. This is not for comedy’s own lack of skill or craft, but simply for comedy’s misappropriation as a narrative form. Throughout the years, by way of either competition or economic superiority, comedy has been pigeonholed into the typified dramatic structure that drama so thoroughly encapsulates. Being forced into a form that exemplifies complex, climactic structure and explicit character development, comedy in its purest form has suffered through the ages. Gertrude Stein’s theory of Landscape Drama, and, more specifically, immediacy, is best attuned to comedy in its truest form. Comedy does not require sweeping character development, obtuse narrative design, or fantastic spectacle to produce superior works of art. Comedy, when compared to drama, exists best in a much more punctuated format. Stein’s theories, while never intended for comedy, align absolutely perfectly with the comedic genre’s design. And epitomized through long form improv on the stage, and the newly-fashioned digital short made profitable by the proliferation of the internet and digital culture, comedy’s purest form has become more readily available as narrative has progressed throughout history. With this thesis, I intend to display the disparity between comedy and drama due to comedy’s misallotment into a format that does not properly encapsulate it to its most fulfilling embodiment. Through this display, I seek to uncover the debt done to the comedic form from centuries of neglect in academic query and merit in order to best prove comedy’s need for ii critical scrutiny. Further, in doing so I hope to better construe a community of comedic research and criticism in order to create better art and more diverse comedic offerings.

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With evidence ranging from visual representations by scanning tunneling microscopes to the fluid and dynamic language of poetry, my research shows that we are shifting from a culture primarily based on ‘sight’ to one that is involved with ‘touch,’ metaphorically and literally speaking. Recent developments in theory and technology, especially quantum physics and post-structuralism, have redefined representation to encompass the necessary reflex of the representer. To be sure, my research has also found feminist and postcolonial criticisms to echo this theory: both have sought to challenge representations due to the objectivity normally attributed to the representer, the Cartesian logic of which quantum theory has destabilized. Thus, by reading poetry with a quantum theoretical lens, specifically the works of Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, Anne Carson, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, I show how ‘touch’ plays into our language, consequently affecting how we think through language. / Master of Arts

Ce mémoire examine les poétiques de trois poètes très différentes, mais dont les œuvres peuvent être qualifiées d'indéterminées et de radicales : Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) et Caroline Bergvall (née en 1962). Dickinson et Stein sont anglo-américaines, tandis que Bergvall est d’origine franco-norvégienne, bien qu'elle choisisse d’écrire en anglais. Toutes les trois rompent la structure syntaxique conventionnelle de l’anglais par leurs poétiques, ce qui comporte des implications esthétiques et politiques. Dans ce qui suit, j’analyse l’indétermination de leurs poétiques à partir de la notion, décrite par Lyn Hejinian, de la description comme appréhension qui présente l’écriture comme un mode de connaissance plutôt qu'un moyen d’enregistrer ce que le poète sait déjà. La temporalité de cette activité épistémologique est donc celle du présent de l’écriture, elle lui est concomitante. J'affirme que c'est cette temporalité qui, en ouvrant l’écriture aux événements imprévus, aux vicissitudes, aux hésitations, aux erreurs et torsions de l’affect, cause l'indétermination de la poésie. Dans le premier chapitre, j'envisage l'appréhension chez Gertrude Stein à travers son engagement, tout au long de sa carrière, envers « le présent continu » de l’écriture. Le deuxième chapitre porte sur le sens angoissé de l’appréhension dans la poésie de Dickinson, où le malaise, en empêchant ou en refoulant une pensée, suspend la connaissance. Le langage, sollicité par une expérience qu'il ne peut lui-même exprimer, donne forme à l'indétermination. Un dernier chapitre considère l’indétermination linguistique du texte et de l’exposition Say Parsley, dans lesquels Bergvall met en scène l’appréhension du langage : une appréhension qui survient plutôt chez le lecteur ou spectateur que chez la poète. / This thesis investigates the poetics of three very different female poets, whose works nevertheless are characterized as both indeterminate and radical: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), and Caroline Bergvall (b. 1962). Dickinson and Stein are Anglo-American, while Bergvall is of French-Norwegian descent yet writes in English, but all three fracture the conventional syntactic structures of the English language in their poetics. This move bears both aesthetic and political implications. In this thesis, I read the indeterminacies of their poetics through Lyn Hejinian’s notion of description as apprehension, which figures writing as a mode of knowing rather than a means of recording something the poet already knows. The temporality of epistemology in their work is thus the present tense of writing; thinking is concomitant with it. Following Hejinian, I contend that it is this temporality that, in making writing open to the vicissitudes, hesitations, reprisals, unexpected events, errors, and the torsions of affect, perturbs determination. The first chapter explores apprehension in Gertrude Stein’s work through her career-long commitment to the present tense of writing: perception occurs concurrently with composition. The second chapter, on Dickinson, hinges on the anxious dimension of apprehension, in which unease, in thwarting or repressing a thought, suspends its understanding. Indeterminacy figures as language claimed by an experience it can’t itself claim. Finally, the last chapter considers the linguistic indeterminacies of Say Parsley, where Bergvall stages the apprehension of language itself in using indeterminacy as a poetic strategy to determinate ends, placing the possibilities, uncertainties and responsibilities of apprehension onto the reader or spectator.

This thesis explores the origin and expression of dialectical thought in the life and writings of the American modernist Laura Riding. Within a biographical framework, I trace the steps by which it became the defining characteristic of her poetic, literary and critical works. A few have noted Riding's dialectical manner; none have appreciated its centrality. This is the first detailed study. An introductory outline of the origin and definition of dialectic provides a working theoretical context for the study that follows. Riding was born Laura Reichenthal in New York City, 1901. Her father, a Jewish émigré, was a committed activist for the left and included Riding in his campaigning at a very young age, immersing and educating her in the political and philosophical radicalism thriving in New York's Jewish communities of the era. There she internalised the revolutionary dialectics that would inform her aesthetic practice. Breaking with her father in her teens, she abandoned politics for literature. As Laura Riding - the name she adopted in 1927 and with which her literary writings continue to be associated - she moved to London and began collaborating with Robert Graves, relocating with him to Majorca in 1929. Producing poetry, fiction, criticism and experimental philosophico-literary works, she became a formidable presence within European literary modernism. Many aspects of her work are dialectical. Paradox, inversion and negation are perennial textual features. Key events in her life were also experienced as dialectical. Her insistence upon 'death' as an inverted sigil of unmediated vitality points toward a negatively dialectical mode of thought. In this regard, the theories of Theodor W. Adorno prove invaluable. Adorno provides a unique lexicon of terms - 'constitutive subjectivity', 'administered world', 'true object' - with which to draw out Riding's dialectical subtleties. Reading them alongside Adorno's negatively dialectical theory of modernist art and aesthetic praxis, certain aspects of Riding's writings are illuminated and, in some respects, they correspond. After a suicide attempt in 1929, Riding's perspective changed. Before it, her point of view was positioned within institutionally determined 'reality', and 'truth' beyond it was adumbrated by dialectical means. Afterwards, she believed herself transfigured: the embodiment of immediate, consciously apprehended noumenal objectivity. But the written word remained recalcitrant toward her attempts to inscribe this newfound positive 'truth'. This frustration contributed to her abandonment of poetry at the end of the 1930s. Re-emerging in the 1960s as Laura (Riding) Jackson, her disavowal of poetry and exploration of 'truth-potential' in language utilised dialectical approaches derived from her earlier experiences and writings.

This study situates the literary works of Amy Lowell, Djuna Barnes, H.D., and Gertrude Stein in a genealogy of American modernist war writing by women that disrupts and revises patriarchal war narrative. These authors take ownership of war and war-related trauma as subjects for women writers. Combining the theories of Dominick LaCapra, Judith Butler, Elaine Scarry, and Elizabeth Grosz with close readings of primary texts, I offer feminist analyses that account for trauma and real-world materiality in literary representations of female embodiment in wartime. This framework enables an interdisciplinary discussion that focuses on representations of war and trauma in conjunction with identity politics.I examine Lowell's poetry collection Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), Barnes's novel Nightwood (1936), H.D.'s poem Trilogy (1944-1946), and Stein's novel Mrs. Reynolds (1952). The chapters highlight the progressively feminist and personal ownership of war and trauma embedded in the texts. Lowell and Barnes begin the work of deconstructing gendered binary constructions and inserting women into war narrative, and H.D. and Stein continue this trajectory through cultivation of more pronounced depictions of women and their bodies in war narrative.The strategies are distinct and specific to each author, but there are common characteristics in their literary responses to World War I and World War II. Each author protests war: war is destructive for Lowell, perverse for Barnes, traumatic for H.D., and disruptive for Stein. Additionally, each author renders female bodies as sites of contested identity and as markers of presence in war narrative. The female bodies portrayed are often traumatized and marked by the ravages of war: bodily injury and psychological and emotional distress. H.D. and Stein envision strategies for resolving (if only partially) trauma, but Lowell and Barnes do not.This project recovers alternative war narratives by important American modernist women writers, expands the definition and canon of war literature, contributes new scholarship on works by the selected authors, and constructs an original critical framework. The ramifications of this study are an increased awareness of who was writing about war and the shape that responses to it took in avant-garde literature of the early twentieth century. / Department of English