Tender Buttons Annotated Edition


Book Description

Gertrude Stein gave her second published collection of poetry the title Tender Buttons in 1914. The poems which make up the collection inside are every bit as offbeat and unexpected as the title. Of course, the literary world has another name for such a choice: avant-garde. Tender Buttons is a title which perfectly complements the central avant-garde thrust behind the poems; one that consistently pushes toward re-investing meaning into entities which have that element.The collection is divided into three part: Objects, Food, and Rooms. Within each section, Stein devotes a series dense verse that take on the appearance of prose paragraphs more than standard poetry. Each poem is a musing filled with the power of repetition, wordplay and the space for recreation created by ambiguity of intent. That ambiguity affords the opportunity for interpretation that can range from the biographical issues of Stein's homosexuality to psychological explanations such as B.F. Skinner's contention that the volume represented a demonstration of "automatic writing" that seeks to connect the hand directly to the subconscious, thus bypassing the natural censor of the conscious mind.Knowing Stein's inspiration may help some readers to make more sense of the highly suggestive, but often unclear connotations the poems seek to make. Cubist art was revolutionizing the art world and in the process casting an awkward shadow over the value of pure representation of what the eye sees. The eye is very much at work in Tender Buttons, but it is a vision produced by a keen desire to penetrate beyond surface appearance. In particular, Stein was fascinated by the possibilities of doing with words what Cubist montage managed to do with images. Just as striking contrasts between seemingly unrelated images in a montage can stimulate new meaning based on contextual relationship, so is context through association at the heart of not just the contents of Tender Buttons, but the very title of the collection.




Tender Buttons Illustrated


Book Description

Tender Buttons is a 1914 book by American writer Gertrude Stein consisting of three sections titled "Objects", "Food", and "Rooms". While the short book consists of multiple poems covering the everyday mundane, Stein's experimental use of language renders the poems unorthodox and their subjects unfamiliar.Stein began composition of the book in 1912 with multiple short prose poems in an effort to "create a word relationship between the word and the things seen" using a "realist" perspective. She then published it in three sections as her second book in 1914




Tender Buttons Annotated


Book Description

Tender Buttons is a 1914 book by American writer Gertrude Stein consisting of three sections titled "Objects", "Food", and "Rooms".




Studies in Description


Book Description

Through an astonishing series of annotations, Carl Peters encourages new ways to engage with Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking Modernist prose-poem Tender Buttons.




Tender Buttons


Book Description

The first publisher of Tender Buttons described the book’s effect on readers as “something like terror, there are no known precedents to cling to.” Written in pencil in a small notebook and barely revised after its first composition, the text caused a sensation and was widely reviewed and discussed on its publication. This edition of Gertrude Stein’s transformative work immerses the text in its cultural context. The most opaque of modernist texts, Tender Buttons also had modernism’s most voluminous and varied response. This Broadview Edition uses the response to Tender Buttons as a way of understanding this spectacular moment in publishing history. Stein’s text is published alongside its parodies, defenses, publicity brochure, and selections from the hundreds of responses to it in American daily newspapers, which placed it in the context of Cubism, fashion shows, and celebrity culture.




Tender Buttons


Book Description

This 1915 work exhibits the distinct prose style and thought-provoking experimental techniques for which its author is famous. One of Stein's most accessible and influential works.




Blood on the Dining-Room Floor


Book Description

A quirky literary mystery from the iconic modernist writer known for her Jazz-Age Paris salon and bestselling book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Gertrude Stein was a distinctly unique talent who penned many novels, essays, and poems. And on one occasion, during a bout of writer’s block, she decided to play with the popular genre of mystery fiction. The book that resulted, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, is not your typical whodunit, just as Stein was not your typical author. With elements of her trademark avant-garde style, the story revolves around the mysterious passing of Madame Pernollet, who is found dead in the courtyard of a hotel owned by her husband. Incorporating some autobiographical details from events at her own French country house, Stein invites the reader to play detective—and offers a glimpse into one of the early twentieth century’s most interesting and challenging literary minds.




Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein


Book Description

A trailblazing modernist, Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Radcliffe with William James and went on to train as a medical doctor before coming out as a lesbian and moving to Paris, where she collected contemporary art and wrote poetry, novels, and libretti. Known as a writer's writer, she has influenced every generation of American writers since her death in 1946 and remains avant-garde. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," provides information and resources that will help teachers and students begin and pursue their study of Stein. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," introduce major topics to be covered in the classroom--race, gender, feminism, sexuality, narrative form, identity, and Stein's experimentation with genre--in a wide range of contexts, including literary analysis, art history, first-year composition, and cultural studies.




To The Lighthouse (annotated)


Book Description

The annotated, authorized edition of one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century with commentary by leading Virginia Woolf scholar Mark Hussey. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and conflict between men and women. To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. There’s the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. With the lighthouse excursion postponed, Woolf shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever. But as time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and together, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life, To the Lighthouse also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other. This authorized edition from the Virginia Woolf library features: Biographical Preface Chronology Introduction to the text Extensive notes Suggestions for further reading This annotated edition is the perfect companion to more fully understand To the Lighthouse, its importance in twentieth century literature, and Virginia Woolf's world.




My Antonia


Book Description

A haunting tribute to the heroic pioneers who shaped the American Midwest This powerful novel by Willa Cather is considered to be one of her finest works and placed Cather in the forefront of women novelists. It tells the stories of several immigrant families who start new lives in America in rural Nebraska. This powerful tribute to the quiet heroism of those whose struggles and triumphs shaped the American Midwest highlights the role of women pioneers, in particular. Written in the style of a memoir penned by Antonia’s tutor and friend, the book depicts one of the most memorable heroines in American literature, the spirited eldest daughter of a Czech immigrant family, whose calm, quite strength and robust spirit helped her survive the hardships and loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. The two form an enduring bond and through his chronicle, we watch Antonia shape the land while dealing with poverty, treachery, and tragedy. “No romantic novel ever written in America...is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.” -H. L. Mencken Willa Cather (1873–1947) was an American writer best known for her novels of the Plains and for One of Ours, a novel set in World War I, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943 and received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments. By the time of her death she had written twelve novels, five books of short stories, and a collection of poetry.