Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Play The Critics Could Not See: Djuna Barnes’S The Dove, Luke Jennings

2015 Undergraduate Awards

Literary criticism on Djuna Barnes’s The Dove has hitherto been lacking, both in quantity and quality. At least, if an astute observation has been made of the play, it has hidden itself as deftly as has The Dove its meanings from the majority of critics. Partly to blame for this is the fact that few critics have even attempted to analyze it in any depth. But any critic who has read The Dove and dismissed it as a witty but nonsensical exercise in anarchistic sadomasochism, has, to put it kindly, not read it closely enough. While exemplary literary writing is …