Editing The Little Review: The Queer Network of a Modernist Periodical



Matchett, Rio
(2022) Editing The Little Review: The Queer Network of a Modernist Periodical. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

This thesis posits The Little Review as the quintessential example of queer, networked modernism, arguing that the networks we know to be so vital to modernism offer opportunities for self-creation as a mode of queer phenomenology, as the modernist movement emerged in the liminal spaces of the network. My analysis of The Little Review triggers a theory of queer editing, and through this thesis I offer a methodology by which other periodical scholars may interrogate their subjects. This theory of queer editing includes my first chapter, Queer Intentions, in which I examine the deconstructing of the reader/editor/artist hierarchy via The Little Review’s manipulation of the reader letter, with reference to the influence of the American anarchist movement, and a case study of one particularly prolific reader correspondent, Alice Groff. My second chapter interrogates Queer Conflict as queerness enduring or even thriving in spite of a kyriarchal world, including the internal dynamics of The Little Review’s editorial team, and the Ulysses trials, which I re-examine through a queer lens. My third chapter, Queer Self-Creation, looks at the use of the self as a medium to effect both social and personal change, here inspired by the dadaists and in particular the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, looking at the editorial persona as a tool of self-creation. Whilst all these modes of queer editing oscillate through being in collusion and tension with each other, ultimately they form a trajectory by which queer self-creation can occur via the performance of the self, through orientation both towards and away from the other, for example Jane Heap’s aligning of herself with such queer figures as Gertrude Stein. By participating in The Little Review’s periodical network, its editors, contributors and readers were called to perceive both themselves and others relationally, and thus were able to position themselves as contingently more or less queer than the other nodes of the network.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords: modernism, periodical, queer, network, margaret anderson, jane heap
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 06 Sep 2022 10:13
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2024 01:30
DOI: 10.17638/03155077
Supervisors:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3155077