GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE QUESTION OF MODERNISM
Stephen Clark
From: Jonathan Breckon <j.br...@britac.ac.uk>
Invitation to The Sarah Tryphena Lecture in American Literature:
GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE QUESTION OF MODERNISM
by Professor Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University
5.30pm, Thursday 5 April 2001
The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
In academic circles, Gertrude Stein is now accepted as a major
twentieth-century writer, yet her actual work continues to provoke
controversy and critics continue to dismiss it as eccentric and
impenetrable.
Professor Marjorie Perloff's lecture will suggest that, in many
respects, Stein is a mainstream modernist, whose aesthetic is not at all
unlike that of her seeming opposite - T.S. Eliot.
Indeed the difference between Stein and Eliot is less aesthetic
than it is epistemological; theirs is a quarrel as to how words mean and how
they are put together. To understand this difference, Professor Perloff
will discuss Stein's theory of grammar in two paradigmatic works - 'Miss
Furr and Miss Skeene' and specific prose poems in 'Tender Buttons'. Once we
learn how to read Stein, Professor Perloff argues, her work is no more
'meaningless' than T.S Eliot.
Attendance is free but if you wish to attend, it is ESSENTIAL to
register beforehand by contacting the Meetings Department at the British
Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH; telephone 020 7969 5264;
email lect...@britac.ac.uk.
The lecture will be followed by a reception to which all members of
the audience are invited.
ENDS
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