Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

Undergraduate honors paper--Mount Holyoke College, 2005. Dept. of English. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-136).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1953. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [446]-456).

This thesis is the first full-length study to investigate memory discourse in Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. It presents multiple close readings of the ways in which memory is inscribed in Mansfield’s stories, taking an approach to memory drawn from the philosophy of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. What Mansfield and Bergson share in common is an idea of the insistence of memory – its survival, determination, assertion and resistance – during a period of multiple social and historical change when memory was variously seen to be in crisis. Bergson’s distinctive theory of memory which opposes temporalism (or ‘time in the mind’) with measured (or ‘spatialised’) time provides a rich interpretive tool for analysing memory in Mansfield’s fiction. Following phases of Bergson’s developing thinking, each of the four chapters introduces a different dimension of memory – the generative, the topological, the degenerative and the cosmic – through which I analyse The Aloe and Prelude, ‘At the Bay’, ‘The Garden Party’, ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, ‘Bliss’ and ‘The Canary’ as well as other less well-known examples of Mansfield’s fictional and personal writings. What emerges from this process is a new Mansfield acutely sensitive to the insistent power of memory and the attenuation of time past into the present, concurrent with some of her modernist contemporaries, yet especially attuned to the signal and significant thought of Bergson.

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Uma das principais peculiaridades que distinguem o conto de outras formas pertencentes ao gênero épico é o compartilhamento de certas características e procedimentos típicos da Lírica. Reflexões acerca desse hibridismo de gênero podem ser encontradas já na obra crítica de um dos mais ilustres iniciadores do conto moderno, o norte-americano Edgar Allan Poe, cuja priorização do efeito incutido pela narrativa e a preocupação em obter um tom e/ou um acontecimento singular que o transmitam ao leitor de forma contundente submetem o conto a diversas exigências internas que são mais comumente encontradas na Lírica, entre elas: a brevidade e intensidade da narrativa, a condensação tanto linguística quanto temática e uma perspectiva que se atém exclusivamente às próprias imediações. O lirismo na obra de Katherine Mansfield se manifesta principalmente através de meticulosos recortes temáticos que demonstram seu olhar atento aos detalhes mais ínfimos, do emprego de imagens e símbolos significativos e da posição cambiante de um narrador que frequentemente procura fundir sua perspectiva e seu próprio discurso ao das personagens principais. Para tanto, a autora recorre largamente à técnica do discurso indireto livre, que permite ao narrador se apropriar da voz de diversas personagens sem se limitar à perspectiva unitária da narrativa em primeira pessoa, o que confere à sua obra um grau ainda maior de subjetividade e, ao mesmo tempo, uma multiplicidade caleidoscópica dentro dos limites estritos do conto. / One of the main singularities that distinguish the short story from other forms that belong to the Epic genre is the sharing of certain characteristics and procedures with Lyric poetry. Considerations on this genre hybridism can already be found in the critical work of one of the most renowned founders of the modern short story, Edgar Allen Poe, whose priorization of the effect created by the narrative, as well as the aim to obtain a tone and/or a singular episode capable of conveying said effect to the reader, subject the short story to various internal requirements which are more commonly found in Lyric poetry, such as: the brevity and the intensity of the narrative, its linguistic and thematic condensation, and a point of view that focuses exclusively on its own immediacies. The lyrism found in the work of Katherine Mansfield is achieved mostly through a careful selection of theme that reveals her attention to detail, the use of meaningful images and symbols, and the shifting point of view of the narrator, who often attempts to combine his perspective and his speech to those of the main characters. In order to do that, the author frequently employs indirect free speech, which allows the voices of different characters to be incorporated without being limited by the one-sided perspective of a first-person narrator. Her stories are thus enriched by an even higher degree of subjectivity and, at the same time, by a kaleidoscopic diversity within the strict limits of the short story.

Uma das principais peculiaridades que distinguem o conto de outras formas pertencentes ao gênero épico é o compartilhamento de certas características e procedimentos típicos da Lírica. Reflexões acerca desse hibridismo de gênero podem ser encontradas já na obra crítica de um dos mais ilustres iniciadores do conto moderno, o norte-americano Edgar Allan Poe, cuja priorização do efeito incutido pela narrativa e a preocupação em obter um tom e/ou um acontecimento singular que o transmitam ao leitor de forma contundente submetem o conto a diversas exigências internas que são mais comumente encontradas na Lírica, entre elas: a brevidade e intensidade da narrativa, a condensação tanto linguística quanto temática e uma perspectiva que se atém exclusivamente às próprias imediações. O lirismo na obra de Katherine Mansfield se manifesta principalmente através de meticulosos recortes temáticos que demonstram seu olhar atento aos detalhes mais ínfimos, do emprego de imagens e símbolos significativos e da posição cambiante de um narrador que frequentemente procura fundir sua perspectiva e seu próprio discurso ao das personagens principais. Para tanto, a autora recorre largamente à técnica do discurso indireto livre, que permite ao narrador se apropriar da voz de diversas personagens sem se limitar à perspectiva unitária da narrativa em primeira pessoa, o que confere à sua obra um grau ainda maior de subjetividade e, ao mesmo tempo, uma multiplicidade caleidoscópica dentro dos limites estritos do conto. / One of the main singularities that distinguish the short story from other forms that belong to the Epic genre is the sharing of certain characteristics and procedures with Lyric poetry. Considerations on this genre hybridism can already be found in the critical work of one of the most renowned founders of the modern short story, Edgar Allen Poe, whose priorization of the effect created by the narrative, as well as the aim to obtain a tone and/or a singular episode capable of conveying said effect to the reader, subject the short story to various internal requirements which are more commonly found in Lyric poetry, such as: the brevity and the intensity of the narrative, its linguistic and thematic condensation, and a point of view that focuses exclusively on its own immediacies. The lyrism found in the work of Katherine Mansfield is achieved mostly through a careful selection of theme that reveals her attention to detail, the use of meaningful images and symbols, and the shifting point of view of the narrator, who often attempts to combine his perspective and his speech to those of the main characters. In order to do that, the author frequently employs indirect free speech, which allows the voices of different characters to be incorporated without being limited by the one-sided perspective of a first-person narrator. Her stories are thus enriched by an even higher degree of subjectivity and, at the same time, by a kaleidoscopic diversity within the strict limits of the short story.

Katherine Mansfield among the Moderns examines Katherine Mansfield’s relationship with three fellow writers: Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Aldous Huxley, and appraises her impact on their writing. Drawing on the literary and the personal relationships between the aforementioned, and on letters, diaries, and journals, this project traces Mansfield’s interactions with her contemporaries, providing a richer and more dynamic portrait of Mansfield’s place within modernism than usually recognized. Hitherto, critical work has not scrutinized Mansfield in the manner I suggest: attending to representations of her as a character in other’s work, while analyzing the degree to which her influence on the aforementioned authors affected their writing and success. Albeit, her influence extends in vastly different ways, and is affected by gender and nationality. While Woolf’s early foray into Modernism is accelerated by Mansfield’s criticism of her work, several of Woolf’s texts – “Kew Gardens,” Jacob’s Room, and Mrs. Dalloway – are similar in certain respects to Mansfield’s work – “Bliss” and “The Garden Party.” A repudiation of Mansfield, personally, and a retelling of her work are seen in Lawrence’s The Lost Girl and Women in Love. Huxley’s Those Barren Leaves and Point Counter Point, contain characterizations of Mansfield that undermine her writing, and her person: both are affected by the mythical misrepresentation of Mansfield, created by Murry after her death, known as the “Cult of Mansfield.” Using Life Writing, this study asserts that Mansfield had impact on the writing of Woolf, Lawrence, and Huxley. Taking into account the many issues that surround the recognition of this, among them: gender politics, colonialism, marginality by genre, and personal relations – these all, to varying degrees, prevented critics from acknowledging that a minor modernist author played a role in the undisputed success of three major authors of the twentieth century.

This essay examines the protagonist of Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” (1922), Laura, and her experiences of events that are made insignificant by the rest of the narrative. Gérard Genette’s narratological theory and the concept of epiphany is put forward in the theroertical framework in order to preform this investigation. Morris Beja’s and Liesl Olson’s studies of the epiphany in modernist literature assists the investigation. Thus, with the support of Genette’s narratological theory and the concept of epiphany, this essay examines epiphanic moments in “The Garden Party”. It will also study how these moments transfer on to the reader through multimodal techniques. This argument is supported by Joseph Conrad’s preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’.