A Study On The Writing Techniques Of Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield is generally held to have revolutionised the 20th Century English short story. Her best work shakes itself free of plots and endings and gives the story, for the first time, the vastness of the interior life, the poetry of feeling and the blurred edges of personality. She has successfully melted modernism and impressionism and developed a new poetic distinct form in her writing. She is known worldwide because of her achievement in raising short-story to a new level of artistry. She is widely recognized as an original and experimental writer, whose stories were the first in England to show the influence of Russian short story writer Chekhov, whom she greatly admired.This paper stresses the need for a more critical approach to the writing techniques and styles of Katherine Mansfield, casting aside the chronological description which tends often to rely on purely biographical material.The paper stresses the importance in her development of fiction theory and practice, illustrates her writing techniques and styles by citing examples of her major works. This paper also stresses the distinct characteristics of Mansfield's writing techniques and styles in her short-story writing which have far-reaching influence on the later short-story writers. With a well-documented influence of Chekhov, she has avoided an overdependence on plot, she reveals the facts and events of her stories partly and leaves the rest for the readers to speculate. Besides, she is also a genius and innovator in exploring new expressing dynamics and methods of English language.