Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was a Modern experimentalist writer, also known for her mentorship of other modern writers, her eye for collecting modern artists, her life-long relationship with Alice B. Toklas, and her role in the circle of avant-garde Parisian women artists and writers.

While Stein was a realist writer, her avant-garde writings and stream-of-conscious prose can be placed in a continuum with other experimental writings, such as those of the surrealists, although their methods and intents were different. Stein's playful writings sought to pull meaning from the words themselves, to strip language of its associations, while simultaneously evoking those associations. She did this through devices such as repetition; famously:

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Works

• Three Lives (1909)
• Tender buttons: objects, food, rooms (1914)
• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

References

• "Paris Was a Woman" (documentary)

Notes

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