| What was Modernism, and in what sense might "the women" have been "the cause" of it? Mina Loy asked and answered this question not just in her own critical essays about the arts, but in the forms of her literary works as well. In readings of her 1914 "Feminist Manifesto" and early lyrics, her autobiographical epic Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose, and the diction of her middle poetry, I trace Loy's development as both cultural critic and poet--functions which are ultimately inseparable in her work. Her interest in the ways female bodies imply new poetics and new epistemologies emerges in her approaches to her linguistic medium. As with Dickinson's poems, Loy's tactical play with her materials engenders an often irreducible textual "instability." Therefore, I have also produced a critical edition of Loy's writings, this edition allows the reader to appreciate the full force of Loy's literary iconoclasm, and supplements my dissertation. Relying upon textual and contextual sources, I argue that this female, multi-lingual, avant-garde writer was well-positioned to fire the first volley in the "revolution of the word.". |
