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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Poetics of liveliness : theories of embryological development and Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans" Smailbegovic, Ada
Abstract
This thesis seeks to create a theoretical space in which Gertrude Stein’s conceptualizations of life and liveliness are related to the biological understandings of living organisms. The primary focus is Stein’s early novel The Making of Americans (1911), in which she seeks to compose her characters in the process of living. The biological context for thinking about Stein’s ideas of liveliness is formulated around theories of embryological development, and, in particular, the historical relation between two developmental theories — preformation and epigenesis. The critical analysis follows the way in which Stein’s initial project of classifying every possible kind of men and women to create a typology of personalities in The Making of Americans is complicated by her interest in how personalities change through relations that form between individuals. The tension that arises between Stein’s initial intention to classify different personality types and her realization that relations play a constitutive role in the development of personality parallels the history of conflict and synthesis between preformation and epigenesis.
Item Metadata
Title |
Poetics of liveliness : theories of embryological development and Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans"
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
2009
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Description |
This thesis seeks to create a theoretical space in which Gertrude Stein’s
conceptualizations of life and liveliness are related to the biological understandings of living organisms. The primary focus is Stein’s early novel The Making of Americans
(1911), in which she seeks to compose her characters in the process of living. The
biological context for thinking about Stein’s ideas of liveliness is formulated around theories of embryological development, and, in particular, the historical relation between two developmental theories — preformation and epigenesis. The critical analysis follows
the way in which Stein’s initial project of classifying every possible kind of men and
women to create a typology of personalities in The Making of Americans is complicated
by her interest in how personalities change through relations that form between
individuals. The tension that arises between Stein’s initial intention to classify different personality types and her realization that relations play a constitutive role in the development of personality parallels the history of conflict and synthesis between
preformation and epigenesis.
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Extent |
1937353 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-11-09
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0068090
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
2009-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Rights URI | |
Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International