Modernist Women Dandies

This study corrects wisdom that only men can be dandies. Revising dandyism to include women dandies offers new interpretations of Edith Sitwell, Nancy Cunard, and Mina Loy, whose poetry and photography feed into each other to produce queer authorial performances, redefining the synergy of dandyism and authorship in modernist literary culture.

Assessing the cultural history of the dandy as a figure traditionally gendered masculine, this wide-ranging study advances a critical space for the discussion of the woman dandy. Modernist Women Dandies revisits dandyism to provide an interpretative framework for re-evaluating the literary careers of women authors with atypical literary presence: Edith Sitwell, Nancy Cunard, and Mina Loy. Cutting across media boundaries, it demonstrates how their experimental poetry and portrait photographs feed into each other, fabricating dandy authorial performances that are simultaneously unapologetically feminine and queer. In showing how these authors redefined the interplay between dandyism and authorship, this book makes an important contribution to rethinking modernist literary culture.

Autorentext

Teona Micevska is a researcher in Comparative and English Literature and a research manager. She completed her PhD in English Literature and Cultural Studies at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, University of Giessen, Germany. Her research interests include literary modernism, cultures of the first half of the twentieth century, queer and trans*feminisms, and authorship studies.

Inhalt

Dandyzettes and dandies of the 1920s - A dandy poetics? Cultural formations, authors, images - Edith Sitwell: Ornamental dandyism - Nancy Cunard: The dandy as a poetic persona - Mina Loy: Dandyism as authorship strategy - New dandyisms