Mina Loy's Critical Modernism

This book provides a fresh assessment of the works of British-born poet and painter Mina Loy. Laura Scuriatti shows how Loys eccentric writing and art celebrate ideas and aesthetics central to the modernist movement while simultaneously critiquing them, resulting in a continually self-reflexive and detached stance that Scuriatti terms critical modernism. Drawing on neglected archival material, Scuriatti illuminates the often-overlooked influence of Loys time spent amid Italian avant-garde culture. In particular, she considers Loys assessment of the nature of genius and sexual identity as defined by philosopher Otto Weininger and in Lacerba, a magazine founded by Futurist leader Giovanni Papini. She also investigates Loys reflections on the artistic masterpiece in relation to the world of commodities; explores the dialogic nature of the self in Loys autobiographical projects; and shows how Loy used her eccentric stance as a political position, especially in her later career in the United States. Offering new insights into Loys feminism and tracing the writers lifelong exploration of themes such as authorship, art, identity, genius, and cosmopolitanism, this volume prompts readers to rethink the place, value, and function of key modernist concepts through the critical spaces created by Loys texts.