Sarah Fantini

PhD

English

Sarah works on modernist avant-garde poetry from the early twentieth century, considering its implications for contemporary poetry and thought. She has presented her work at a number of conferences internationally and locally, and teaches English within the undergraduate program.

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Thesis

Relation and Resistance to Representation: Ecological Modernism in the Poetry of Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

My thesis brings together discourses within modernist studies and ecocriticism through close readings of poetry by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Mina Loy, and Gertrude Stein - contributors to the early twentieth century modernist avant-garde. These close readings are attentive to the features of their poetry that resist representation, such as collage, nonsense, and sound, which operate alongside representational elements. My work demonstrates how reading methodologies derived from ecocriticism can enhance the legibility of the non-mimetic aspects of these three poets' writing, by showing a continuity between the materiality of their poetic language and a social and physical environment.

Research interests

  • Modernism
  • Avant-garde
  • Poetry
  • Ecocriticism
  • Close Reading

Supervisors