May Sinclair, Modernist Critic

Résumé En

I propose to examine May Sinclair's contribution to the debate of her time on what came to be known as modernist writing. Although her work has tended to be relegated to the periphery of modernism, or even as pre-modernist for the most part, Sinclair entertained close relationships with many major modernist figures such as Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and Rebecca West, and produced lively and singular criticism on modernist writing, which was mostly published in The English Review and in The Egoist. A prolific novelist, Sinclair also wrote extensively on ways in which literature can participate in the modern movement, and is perhaps best known for first applying William James’s concept of the ‘stream of consciousness’ to literary technique in her analysis of Dorothy Richardson’s first three instalments of Pilgrimage. Additionally, Sinclair’s style of criticism is itself a mindful exercise in a more innovative approach to literature. Sinclair’s reviews are often imbued with a metatextual quality, as she also uses her reviews at a platform to ‘criticiz[e] criticism’ and to ponder what criticism should become in an era of literary experimentation. Examining her critical work should thus fulfil the dual purpose of establishing the specificity of Sinclair’s perspective on modernist practices of writing, and of contributing to reassess her own stance within the modernist movements.