Reading Gertrude Stein: Body, Text, Gnosis

by Lisa Ruddick

Overview

Reading Gertrude Stein traces the evolution of the mind and art of Gertrude Stein from Three Lives through The Making of Americans to Tender Buttons. In a series of close readings, Lisa Ruddick shows how Stein, whom she regards as the first truly modern writer in English, absorbed the influence of several of the major thinkers of her day (particularly William James and Freud), and then developed unique perspectives of her own original language and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801423642
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/29/1990
Series:	Reading Women Writing
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.06(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lisa Ruddick is Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

What People are Saying About This

John T. Irwin

Lisa Ruddick has written a superb book on Gertrude Stein that will appeal to readers interested in the beginnings of twentieth-century American literature, in women's writing, and in psychoanalytic criticism. I highly recommend it.

Editorial Reviews

Ruddick's interpretative study of Gertrude Stein breaks new ground in both Stein studies and poststructural theory, remaining accessible while rejecting neither indeterminate polysemy nor the thematic unity of 'idea.'... Through valuable interpretations of the major early Stein texts ('Melanctha,' The Making of Americans, G.M.P., and Tender Buttons), Ruddick details the 'serial acts of self-definition' of the modernist self in relation to William James, Freud, and the Bible.... Ruddick is authoritative in dealing with Stein's work, feminist theory, and the cultural phenomenon of modernism.

Choice

"Lisa Ruddick has written a superb book on Gertrude Stein that will appeal to readers interested in the beginnings of twentieth-century American literature, in women's writing, and in psychoanalytic criticism. I highly recommend it."

John T. Irwin

Ruddick's interpretative study of Gertrude Stein breaks new ground in both Stein studies and poststructural theory, remaining accessible while rejecting neither indeterminate polysemy nor the thematic unity of 'idea.'... Through valuable interpretations of the major early Stein texts ('Melanctha, ' The Making of Americans, G.M.P., and Tender Buttons), Ruddick details the 'serial acts of self-definition' of the modernist self in relation to William James, Freud, and the Bible.... Ruddick is authoritative in dealing with Stein's work, feminist theory, and the cultural phenomenon of modernism.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher