Katherine Mansfield and Literary Modernism

by Wilson, Janet; Kimber, Gerri; Reid, Susan

• ISBN13: 9781441111302
• ISBN10: 1441111301
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-07
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Katharine Mansfield's arrival in London in 1908 marked the start of her professional career as a writer and this study marks a revival of her reputation as one of the foremost practitioners of the short story. The international line-up of contributors attests to Mansfield's global appeal. By discussing her fiction in relation to her life, the contributors to this critical work present reinterpretations and readings. Enhanced by new transcriptions of manuscripts and access to her diaries and letters, these readings combine biographical approaches with critical-theoretical ones and focus not only on philosophy and fiction, but class and gender, biography/autobiography. The historical and aesthetic studies of Mansfield's work all take place within a framework of modernist literature, criticism and theory, thereby expanding our understanding of what it means to be a Modernist while allocating Mansfield a firm place in any current study of Modernism.

Author Biography

Janet Wilson is professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Northampton, UK, Research Fellow in New Zealand Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Gerri Kimber is Associate Lecturer at the Open University, UK. She is Co-Editor of the literary journal Katherine Mansfield Studies. Susan Reid is Co-Editor of Katherine Mansfield Studies and Reviews, Editor for the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Preface	p. vii
Preface	p. viii
Notes on Contributors	p. x
Introduction	p. 1
Mansfield and Modernism I: Philosophy and Fiction
Mansfield, Rhythm and the Émigré Connection	p. 13
Katherine Mansfield, Rhythm and Henri Bergson	p. 30
'The Famous New Zealand Mag.-Story Writer'; Kadierine Mansfield, Periodical Publishing and the Short Story	p. 42
Authentic Existence and the Characters of Kadierine Mansfield	p. 53
Mansfield and Modernism II: Self, Voice and Other
The Elusiveness of Reality: The Limits of Cognition in Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories	p. 67
Un-Defining the Self in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield	p. 78
'-Ah, what is it? - that I heard': Voice and Affect in Katherine Mansfield's Short Fictions	p. 89
Kezia in Wonderland	p. 101
Mansfield: Class and Gender
'The Women in the Stor(y)': Disjunctive Vision in Mansfield's 'The Aloe'	p. 115
'A City of One's Own': Women, Social Class and London in Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories	p. 128
'My Insides Are All Twisted Up': When Distortion and the Grotesque became 'the Same Job' in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf	p. 139
'On the Subject of Makness': The Different Worlds of Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence	p. 149
Mansfield: Biography/Autobiography
The Mansfield Legacy	p. 165
'My Many Selves': A Reassessment of Katherine Mansfield's Journal	p. 173
'Blue with Cold': Coldness in the Works of Katherine Mansfield	p. 188
Katherine Mansfield's Menagerie	p. 202
Index	p. 211
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