Of Poodles, Mockingbirds, and Beetles: Gertrude Stein's Zoopoetics

Various kinds of animals, including frogs, pigeons, cuckoos, nightingales, cows, sheep and goats appear in Gertrude Stein's work, creating a complex web of zoopoetic encounters. Dogs, of course, play a prominent role as is fitting for a writer who was also devoted to sharing her life with dogs, including her famous poodle Basket. In "The Geographical History of America," a dog famously plays a key role in helping Stein theorize the distinction between human nature and the human mind when she writes: "I am I because my little dog knows me." In reading Stein through a zoopoetic lens, inflected by recent theoretical work in animal studies, this essay theorizes the significance of a variety of nonhuman animals that appear in Stein's texts, to suggest that her work was in dialogue with the historical context of Darwinian evolutionary theory, which was reimagining biological materiality as a site of change rather than essentialist fixity.