Katherine Mansfield And Literary Magazines

This dissertation appropriates the sociology of literature proposed by Pierre Bourdieu to analyse the intricate relationship between Katherine Mansfield and literary magazines. This dissertation tries to investigate how the writer Mansfield was produced in the modern literary field. Thus this dissertation takes an interest not only in how literary magazines had shaped Mansfield’s style but also in how in the other way she had exerted her influence towards magazines in the later part of her career.The first chapter studies the process of the maturation of Mansfield’s modernist aesthetic through her interaction with various magazines. On the one hand, the socialist magazine New Age and the fauvist magazine Rhythm are formative forces in the production of Mansfield the writer by helping her accumulating literary prestige; on the other hand, the magazine Athenaeum and the middlebrow magazine London Mercury have helped Mansfield to reach a larger audience. The second chapter studies the sexual politics of Mansfield in the literary magazines and the maturation of Mansfield’s female aesthetic through her interaction with various magazines by examining the intertextuality between Mansfield’s texts with other texts in the magazines, the intricate relationship between Mansfield and other writers, as well as Mansfield’s intricate relationship with magazines with different political and aesthetic agendas. The third chapter places Mansfield and literary magazines in the larger context of the tension between modernism and the Empire to investigate Mansfield’s changing sense of belonging in different stages of her career. During the earlier part of her career Mansfield presents an ambiguous sense of cultural identification towards the Empire by assuming a narrative transvestism. In the latter part of her career she shows her increasing cultural confidence by embracing her homeland New Zealand.Therefore, this dissertation has focused on the interaction between the writer Katherine Mansfield and literary magazines. Mansfield’s interaction with literary magazines was conducted through the intertexuality of her works with other articles in the magazines, through her aesthetic exchange with other writers, as well as through her interaction with magazines of various political stances represented by the editors and core contributors. This dissertation has examined the woman writer Katherine Mansfield’s literary trajectory and achievements through the heterogeneous and multidimensional perspective of class, gender and Empire. Through the case study of Katherine Mansfield and literary magazines, this dissertation has tried to seek a new mode of short story writers study approach. This new approach could be useful in examining other modernist short story writers in the early twentieth century.