Re-Forming World Literature: Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Short Story

327 Pages·2018·2.213 MB·English

by  Gerri Kimber, Janet Wilson

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“This important collection gathers an international group of scholars to position tudieS in orld iterature
Mansfield’s work in global literary frameworks. Lively, engaging, and timely inter-
pretations emerge here, reading Mansfield’s writing alongside that of a range of
Vol. 6
authors with whom her work has not been compared before. Highly original and
drawing on a dazzling range of reference, these essays offer new understandings
not only of Mansfield’s life and work, but of the short story’s history and place in
world literature.”
Prof. Rishona Zimring, Lewis & Clark College K Re-forming
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“This new collection expertly demonstrates the distinctive features of Mansfield’s b
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fiction, notably the registration of affect as manifested in an intense, fluctuating, r
yet always embodied vitality that plays across subjectivity, setting, and narrative , W World Literature:
alike and which marks off her modernism. In a widely contextualized series of ils
focused analyses, the chapters unite in a reappraisal of the status of the short story o
n
to confirm Mansfield’s contribution to this mode, specifically in the tradition of (
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women’s writing, and her growing presence as a transnational figure in the newly d
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demarcated field of world literature.” .)
PMeetedri aB, rUonoikveerr,s Eitmy oefr iNtuost tPinrogfheassmor of Literary and Cultural Studies, Department of Culture, Film and K the Modernist Short Story
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The ground-breaking essays gathered in this volume argue that e
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global paradigms of World Literature, often referencing the major in
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metropolitan centres of cultural and literary production, do not M
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always accommodate voices from the margins and writing within n
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minority genres such as the short story. Katherine Mansfield is a e
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supreme example of a writer who is positioned between a number a
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of different borders and boundaries: between modernism and d
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postcolonialism; between the short story and other genres (like the h
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novella or poetry, or non-fiction, such as letters, diaries, reviews, M
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and translations); between Europe and New Zealand. In pointing d
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to the global production and dissemination of short stories, and in rn
particular the growing reception of Mansfield’s work worldwide since ist
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her death in 1923, the volume shows how literary modernism can h
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be read in a myriad of ways in terms of the contemporary category rt
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of new World Literature. t
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y
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tudieS in orld iterature
Series Editors: Janet Wilson, Chris Ringrose
ISBN: 978-3-8382-1113-8
ibidem Gerri Kimber, Janet Wilson (eds.) ibidem
Gerri Kimber, Janet Wilson (eds.)

Re‐forming
World Literature
Katherine Mansfield and the
Modernist Short Story
S W L
TUDIES IN ORLD ITERATURE

Editors: Advisory Board:
Prof Janet Wilson, University of Northampton, UK Dr Gerd Bayer, University of Erlangen, Germany
Dr Chris Ringrose, Monash University , Australia Dr Fiona Tolan, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
The book series STUDIES IN WORLD LITERATURE is devoted to the analysis of global literature, and the
multiple, sometimes contradictory, tendencies it accommodates. Its field of enquiry is the ‘new’
world literature, a category currently emerging through multiple changes from the old Romantic
concept of Weltliteratur, attuned to the challenges posed by postcolonialism and multiculturalism,
the increasing globalisation of literature (but also its reverse trend, regionalisation), and the
diversification of the market place. STUDIES IN WORLD LITERATURE encourages research which
celebrates and critically assesses a phenomenon that can be understood, as Pheng Cheah points
out, as the ‘literature of the world—imaginings and stories [...] that track and account for
contemporary globalization as well as older historical narratives of worldhood’.
World literature can be brought into dialogue with postcolonial writing through scrutiny of
how it is written, read, circulated, and received transnationally within the contemporary circuit of
global cultural capital. The series also responds to the need to examine the inherent
contradictions in the concept of a world literature and dependence on a hegemonic (often
English‐centred) literary and critical discourse.
The series seeks to address these tensions, and consequently welcomes:
1) volumes which debate such matters theoretically (including definitions of what counts as
‘world literature’ and the place of postcolonial literary production within this larger category);
2) comparative studies of texts and genres from different countries and cultures under common
headings or concepts such as memory, ethics, and human rights.
Volumes on national literatures, when these are set in a world/comparative or generic context,
will also be considered, and the series will include discussions of other complementary aspects of
discourse, narratology, and media. While writing by ‘canonical’ authors will be covered, the series
will additionally propose wider cultural and intellectual genealogies for ‘minor’ or occluded
writers. A key aim of this series is to redeploy the familiar rhetoric of postcolonial theory and
discourse in relation to concepts relevant to world literature by introducing arguments that will
be integrated with the evidence of individual literary practice. This emphasis on contesting
definitions of ‘diasporic’ or ‘postcolonial’ writing, ‘transnational’ or ‘transcultural’ literatures
and ‘world’ literature as used by writers, critics and thinkers may lead to a reconsideration of the
boundaries that divide and intersections that link these related fields.
Recent volumes:
2 Vincent van Bever Donker 4 Gareth Griffiths, Philip Mead (eds.)
Recognition and Ethics in World Literature The Social Work of Narrative
Religion, Violence, and the Human Human Rights and the Cultural Imaginary
ISBN 978‐3‐8382‐0867‐1 ISBN 978‐3‐8382‐0958‐6
3 Bruce King 5 Johanna Emeney
From New National to World Literature The Rise of Autobiographical Medical Poetry and
Essays and Reviews the Medical Humanities
ISBN 978‐3‐8382‐0876‐3 ISBN 978‐3‐8382‐1128‐2
Gerri Kimber, Janet Wilson (eds.)

RE‐FORMING
WORLD LITERATURE
Katherine Mansfield and the
Modernist Short Story

ibidem- Verlag
Stuttgart
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Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover picture:
Nova totius terrarum orbis tabula Amstelodami, ex officina G. a Schagen (1682). Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.



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ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7113-2

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ................................................................................. 7

Abbreviations ............................................................................................ 9

Introduction ............................................................................................. 11

Global Modernisms

Enda Duffy
Mansfield, Soma, and the Burning Dress of Modernism ...................... 29

Ruchi Mundeja
Of Parvenus and Pantheons: Mansfield’s Short Fiction as
a “Reading Back” .................................................................................................... 51

Maurizia Boscagli
The Art of Work: Katherine Mansfield’s Servant and Perception ... 71

UK and US Modernisms

Ailsa Cox
Slippery British: Katherine Mansfield’s Legacy in the UK .................. 93

Janet Wilson
“Kew Gardens” and “Miss Brill”: Virginia Woolf and
Katherine Mansfield as Short Story Writers ........................................... 113

Sydney Janet Kaplan
Katherine Mansfield’s American Legacy:
The Case of Margery Latimer ......................................................................... 139

Poetry, Suffering and the Self

Claire Davison
On First Looking into Mansfield’s Heine: Dislocative Lyric
and the Sound of Music .................................................................................... 161
5
Todd Martin
Constructing Jealousy, Exacting Revenge: Allusions to Robert
Browning’s “My Last Duchess” in Katherine Mansfield’s “Poison” .. 185

Erica Baldt
Katherine Mansfield: Homeostasis, Equanimity, and Fiction .......... 209

Fairy Stories and War

Gerri Kimber
Katherine Mansfield, Fairy Tales and Fir Trees: “the story is
past too: past! past!—that’s the way with all stories” ........................ 231

Elsa Högberg
Consuming Identifications: Food Politics in Mansfield’s
“A Suburban Fairy Tale” ................................................................................... 251

Aimee Gasston
Treasure and Rot: Preservation and Bequest in
Mansfield’s Short Fiction ................................................................................. 271

Janka Kascakova
Death by Ink: The Symbolism of Ink in Katherine Mansfield’s
“The Fly” .................................................................................................................. 287

Notes on Contributors........................................................................ 305

Index ........................................................................................................ 309

6
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the following individuals and institu‐
tions: Valerie Lange at ibidem, for her advice and guidance during the
preparation of the manuscript; Chris Ringrose, for helping to prepare
the final texts for publication; the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wel‐
lington, New Zealand and especially Linda McGregor and Fiona Oliver;
Ralph Kimber, for preparing the index; Peter Brooker and Rishona
Zimring for their endorsements.
7

Abbreviations
Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Katherine Mansfield’s
works are to the following editions and abbreviated thus:
CP
Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison, eds. 2016. The Collected Poems of
Katherine Mansfield. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
CW1 and CW2
Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan, eds. 2012. The Edinburgh Edition
of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield. Vols 1 and 2—The Col‐
lected Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
CW3
Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith, eds. 2014. The Edinburgh Edition of
the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield. Vol. 3—The Poetry and
Critical Writings. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
CW4
Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison, eds. 2016. The Edinburgh Edition of
the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield. Vol. 4—The Diaries of Kath‐
erine Mansfield, including Miscellaneous Works. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Letters 1–5
Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds. 1984–2008. The Collected
Letters of Katherine Mansfield. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Notebooks 1–2
Margaret Scott, ed. 2002. The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks. 2 vols.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
9