An Exploration Of Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Realm In Short Stories

Not being a prolific writer, Katherine Anne Porter produced twenty six short stories, one novel and several dozen essays. Regardless of her great success with her novel Ship of Fools, it is her short stories that have rendered her the fame as one of the most distinguished writers in the 20th century America. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter represents the peak of Porter's achievement as a writer. This collection covers all her works, describing compromises, conflicts, growth pain, miserable sufferings and other depressing things that exist in the chaotic world. Those bitter emotions or terrible relationships are actually the real themes among people in the modern society.Her collected stories compose of two series of works, one is her well-known Miranda Stories, which are paid large proportion of attention in China, and are often interpreted from cultural, feminist or autobiographical perspectives. This thesis, however, intends to focus on the other series of independent-plotted works. They are about solitude and depression of human beings, and which by the author's keen observation are gouged out and well penetrated from the aspects of love, marriage and even ordinary life. She thus weaved groups of conflicts about man, such as conflicts of personalities, of psychic activities and of different people encountering, with a view to the exposure of the individual predicament in the modern society. Their themes appear various and universal. With her outstanding narrative techniques, Porter successfully turns them into intriguing and enlightening stories.This thesis exactly intends to explore these narrative techniques, figuring out in which way Porter makes these stories attractive. Narrative approach is seldom used to interpret Porter' s works. Detailed analysis proceeds from four aspects, that is, the narrator's objectivity, narrative time, focalization and speech presentation. Besides, profound themes derived from Porter's unique insight are another aspect of her overall organic artistry. Therefore, last part of thesis will be the discussion about the thematic structure in Porter's works.