Mansfield's "e;Prelude"e; to a new era: On the development of a narrative structure

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Trier (Faculty II: English), course: PS Literary Studies: Katherine Mansfield, language: English, abstract: Katherine Mansfield is a genius among the writers of the early 20thcentury and her work should not only be paid particular attention due to her credit for feminist literature; her work paved a way for all aspects of contemporary writing. The first 'innovation' she introduced was her choice of narrative form: the short story. It was not that the short story became her invention, but writing novels was still more fashionable, at least among Anglo-Saxon authors (Ganzmann 1985, 1-3). Yet, it is not purely by reason of her motivation to leave Victorian traditions behind that she preferred this form. Mansfield was destined to live a short life, thus, it fell to her lot to write short stories.1Fortunately, even "e;Prelude"e;, intended to become a novel entitled "e;The Aloe"e;, turned out to be a short story. Her will to modernize made her surpass 'old-fashioned' conventions and experiment with points of view through revising "e;The Aloe"e;, until she found a style that became characteristically her own. She managed to enable the readers of her stories to enter into a kind of personal relationship with the characters of her writings. This assignment shall investigate the development from The Aloe as an auktorial narrative to Prelude being more personal . First, it provides a brief overview of the story s textual genesis. Afterwards, we shall have a close look at Mansfield s point-of-view-technique: what were the circumstances for her experimenting? What is distinctive about Mansfield s style and what are the side effects ? Here, Mansfield s glimpses shall be devoted an extra chapter, since these hold a special position in the improvement of Mansfield s method. As a last point, we want to compare Prelude with its original version The Aloe to demonstrate the progression.