摘 要

凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德被誉为英国文学史上著名的小说家。通过自己的小说创作，曼斯菲尔德在写作技巧的革新上进行了大胆的尝试，并对英语短篇小说产生了深远的影响，因此她被评论界誉为“短篇小说大师”。其短篇小说的特征是现代主义技巧的运用。本文旨在分析现代主义技巧在她的三篇代表性短篇小说《游园会》、《幸福》和《金丝雀》中的运用，具体分析了现代主义的情节构造、现代主义的叙事策略以及表现现代主义主题的象征手法，从而展现她对现代主义写作手法的伟大贡献。

关键词：凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德; 短篇小说; 现代主义技巧

Contents

1. Introduction----------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

2. Demonstration------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3

2.1. The adoption of modernistic knitting of plot -----------------------------------------3

2.1.1 Slices of characters’ life with epiphanies of life ------------------------------------4

2.1.2 The arrangement of open endings ----------------------------------------------------5

2.2 The employment of modernistic narrative pattern ------------------------------------7

2.2.1 The shifts between points of view ----------------------------------------------------7

2.2.2 Interior monologue ---------------------------------------------------------------------9

2.3 The employment of symbolism to reflect modernistic themes ---------------------10

2.3.1 The symbolic meaning of the plants -------------------------------------------------10

2.3.2 The symbolic meaning of the animals -----------------------------------------------13

3. Conclusion-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------15

Works Cited-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16

Bibliography------------------------------------------------------------------------------------17

An Analysis of the Modernistic Techniques in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Fiction

1. Introduction

Katherine Mansfield (October 14, 1888 – January 9, 1923) was reputed as a prominent modernist writer of short fiction, who was born in colonial New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom as a writer in 1908. The Bohemian lifestyle in London made her feel lonely and hopeless because the real life was far away from what she had expected. In reality, she left her husband George Bowden the day after their marriage because of unhappiness in the marriage. In 1912, she got to know John Middleton Murry, a critic and editor, who published some of her works, and they married. Her second marriage brought her a lot of happiness, but her brother’s death in World War I made her feel bitter and compunctious about her family due to her estrangement with them. Knowing much about the distance between ideality and reality, she started to write some short stories based on her personal experiences which reflected her personal emotions and outlooks. Her life experiences formed the foundation of her pursuit of her literary course and she had gained a high reputation for her first collection of short stories, Bliss (1920). Throughout her short life (she died at the age of 35), however, she was a prolific writer with many excellent works, including short story collections like In a German Pension (1911), Bliss and Other Stories (1920), The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922) and so on. Roger Robinson once claimed that Katherine Mansfield was an important and crucial figure in the 20^th century literature. She renovated the short story in England and made a great contribution to the development of literary modernism. (Xu 1)

Modernism, a philosophical movement, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The reasons for the emergence of modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and rapid growth of cities, followed by WWI. Generally speaking, it included the activities and creations of those who felt that the traditional forms of art, literature, social organization and so on were not incompatible with the new world. Therefore, people decided to break with the tradition and create a new form of writing according to their own wish. A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness, which has led to experiments with writing forms along with the use of modern literary techniques.