As Gertrude Stein's creative interests had such an incredibly broad scope, an approach to her as an author requires a narrow focus. The intent of this thesis is to explore Gertrude Stein's grammatical theory. Stein believed that literature, if it were to be effective, had to reflect the contemporary scene; that is, the setting should be in the present while the subject matter should concern itself with the "universal." Moreover, the style of the writing, the way each line was composed, should somehow complement subject matter and setting. The way in which Stein proposed to match grammar and the contemporary scene in prose fiction is the subject of this thesis.The thesis is divided into three chapters, and the chapters are intended to move progressively -the second chapter builds and expands upon the first, and the third chapter builds and expands upon the first two. Thus, the first consideration is punctuation. Stein's theory on punctuation is of primary importance; a close examination of why Stein felt it was necessary to discard nearly all of the conventional punctuation marks serves to introduce the highly complex and abstract grammatical theory. After a distillation of the theory from her lectures and books has been achieved, the theory can be applied to the prose itself and whether or not the theory was successful in practice can be evaluated. The second chapter on words and the third on sentences and paragraphs follow the same pattern of organization as the first chapter. The conclusion attempts to quickly sum-up and to provide this writer's answer to the question which remains: did Gertrude Stein's grammatical theory prove successful when put into practice in the prose fiction?In each chapter, then, the primary emphasis is placed upon the extracting of the grammatical theory from the mass of Stein’s work dealing with the subject. As a result of this necessary to attempt to define in concrete terms what Stein meant by her abstract theories. And finally, the theory must be applied to the prose work whether the theory did or could work. The thesis concentrates on Stein's early work, Three Lives, and uses this work as the testing ground for the theory because the use of essentially one book serves to keep the analysis within workable boundaries and because Three Lives is, in my view, the most accessible and thematically sustained work of all her serious prose pieces. I have, nonetheless, considered several of the later Stein pieces in an attempt to provide a more extensive analysis of the grammatical theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/181214 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | MacPherson, Gregory N. |
| Contributors | Sutton, William A. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 92 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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