Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens : the performance of modern consciousness

This book traces the presence of the theatre, both literally and metaphorically, in the plays and poetry of Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens, and examines the parallel depictions of modern 'consciousness' as performance, as 'staging' that are found in both authors' work.

Approaching the question of consciousness for these two writers in its specific literary and cultural contexts, the author shows how the concepts of stage and theatre allow both Stein and Stevens to articulate a form of modernist consciousness that is created and self-creating.