Chapter 1 Introduction: The Force of Landscape

Voris explains that the “landscape plays” Stein began writing in 1922 represent a critical breakthrough and introduces this period of writing as a case study for a new critical approach. The landscape homology is a painterly analogy that allows Stein to address the problems of time sense she identifies in conventional drama by creating spatial effects in composition. This in turn gives her new impetus and a spatial method for re-examining the temporality associated with knowledge. Voris summarizes critical debates concerning the interpretation of meaning in Stein’s work, including competing approaches of Marjorie Perloff and Jennifer Ashton. She proposes that the landscape homology enacts Stein’s radical empiricism, and that we might use Stein’s model of knowledge and her method of making sense in place of rationalism. Subsequent chapters trace how Stein’s epistemology develops in her landscape writing and why it results in a new method of portraiture.