"Ostracized as we are with God": Mina Loy's Anti-career and the Search for Originality

<p>Among many modernist artists, Mina Loy remains one of the most complex and allusive. Recent posthumous exposure of Loy's life and work adds to this precarity. A significant piece of Loy's life that is especially complex to contemporaries is her time spent writing. By establishing Loy's subjective relationship with her Victorian upbringing, this paper seeks to show examples of its influence on her search for originality. Mainly, the paper examines Loy's concept of originality, where that concept may have come from, and how it is reflected in her literature. The paper analyzes three of Loy's literary works, her poems "Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots" (1914) and "Apology of Genius" (1922), and her novel <em>Insel</em> (1930s), to establish Loy's unique concept of originality and how it developed over time amid complex artistic moments.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2026

Author dc:creator

• Phillips, Peyton L

Contributors dc:contributor

• Christopher Spaide
• Charles Sumner
• Ery Shin

• Modernism
• Mina Loy
• Originality
• Poetry
• Insel
• Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Modern Literature
• Women's Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/1198

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-2292