COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION: COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY, STEIN’S RADCLIFFE THEMES, AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN WRITER

COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION: COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY, STEIN’S RADCLIFFE THEMES, AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN WRITER

By Sara Speidel

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Steven Evans

An Abstract of the Thesis Presented

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

in English

December, 2012

                        The thesis offers an in-depth analysis of the themes Gertrude Stein wrote for a required course in English composition during her sophomore year at Radcliffe College (1894-95). Based on a new transcription of the manuscripts, the study reassesses the place of the Radcliffe themes in Stein’s work and examines the themes in relation to methods of writing instruction she encountered at Harvard, including the principles of composition formulated in Barrett Wendell’s textbook English Composition. A close reading of the daily themes Stein wrote for English 22, in relation to Wendell’s text and the comments of her instructor William Vaughn Moody, suggests that both the material practices of writing instruction and Wendell’s articulation of theoretical principles in English Composition had a lasting effect on her poetics.

     Mapping points of connection between Stein’s narrative experiments in the themes and her novel The Making of Americans, the thesis makes legible the extent and complexity of Stein’s engagement with composition pedagogy. It focuses, in particular, on how her compositional practices in The Making of Americans work in dialogue with and revise Wendell’s “Trinity” of principles (Unity, Mass, and Coherence).