On Stein's View Of Daily Life And History

Gertrude Stein is an American female writer whose artistic techniques are influenced by experimental artists to some degree, such as Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne. Her innovative writing emphasizes the sounds and rhythms rather than the sense of words. Among her works, Tender Buttons is generally acknowledged to be Stein's most successful experimental work. In Tender Buttons, images and phrases often come together in surprising ways—similar in manner to cubist painting. This thesis focuses on the analysis of Stein's view of daily life and history from the angle of the artistic techniques in Tender Buttons.This thesis includes five parts: introduction, three main chapters and conclusion. Chapter One studies how Stein uses color words and nouns to describe the static picture of daily life. On the respect of using color word, Stein is undoubtedly influenced by impressionists, especially Cézanne. While in Tender Buttons, nouns are not only the names of objects, but also contain many uncertain meanings. Chapter Two mainly discusses how Stein presents dynamic process of history by punctuation and cadences. In fact, Tender Buttons is similar to prose more than poetry in form. Thus, punctuation has its own meaning. From the abandon of punctuation to review of punctuation, Stein tries to express her consideration of continuity of history by use of comma. By analyzing the poems'cadences, it is not difficult to find the intention of Stein who wants to convey the rhythm of events in cadences. In chapter Three, the focus is on"collage""simplification"and"repetition"in Tender Buttons. Collage and simplification present the trivialness and simplicity of daily life, while repetition reflects the cyclicity of history.In a word, Gertrude Stein not only makes a contribution to the innovation of poem-writing, but also finds a better way to express the nature of daily life and history. Through the analysis of different kinds of artistic techniques, the reader will find that in Stein's eyes, that daily life is trivial and simple although it is colorful and contains many things and history is not only a dynamic but also a repetitive process.