Geography and Plays (1922) : paysages intimes

Abstract

In spite of the originality of Gertrude Stein’s modernist plays, her dramatic work remains largely unknown. This paper focuses on the writer’s early plays which are considered from the perspective of the landscape. If Stein considers her 1922 play Lend a Hand or Four Religions, as her first “landscape play”, the plays from Geography and Plays (written before 1922 and the publication of the volume) can be seen as prototypes of Stein’s dramatic landscaping. These plays can be read as landscapes of the intimate in that they translate the subjectivity of a writer, of her phantasmatic characters, and also of her readers. To demonstrate that subjectivity is prevailing in Stein’s works, the use of the terms “geography” and “landscape” will be studied, before focusing on Stein’s pictorial writing. Finally, the focus will be on the agency of the readers-spectators.

Keywords

• cubism
• experience
• geography
• landscape
• modernism
• moment