Item Details

abstract

A study of Gertrude Stein's poetry collection Tender Buttons, this thesis uncovers and explores the text's covert maternal trope. Although Stein staunchly evaded categorization as a feminist, the employment of maternal imagery and the exploration of a language predicated by the feminine space of the womb warrant a reassessment of Stein's stance on feminism. This thesis identifies and elucidates the poetic exploration of the womb as a space containing one not yet formed, that is, the unnamed, ungendered, uninscribed in the restrictive and hegemonic yoke of culture. In this space, Stein delights in the indeterminacy of a language not yet born into the society that prescribes it to a single denotative method. Through consideration of French Feminism, this thesis identifies Stein's poetry as a harbinger of Kristeva's semiotic register yet resists its categorization as feminist. Interpreting Tender Buttons instead as a portent of diachronic linguistics, I hope to extend the analysis of the collection beyond the feminist position that increasingly dominates Stein scholarship. Positing the collection as an attempt toward the nullification of gendered writing, I suggest the potential to divest the employment of the female body as a tool solely for the construction of a feminist/linguistic argument.

subject

experimental poetry

feminism

Gertrude Stein

maternal

poetics

Tender Buttons

contributor

Williams, Katherine Mills (author)

DeShazer, Mary K. (committee chair)

Overing, Gillian (committee member)

Hena, Omaar (committee member)

date

2014-01-15T09:35:31Z (accessioned)

2015-01-15T09:30:09Z (available)

2013 (issued)

degree

English (discipline)

embargo

2015-01-15 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/39126 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

title

"Sometime There is Breath": Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons as Maternal Lexicon

type

Thesis