A Stylistic Analysis Of Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield is one of the representatives in British literatureof the twentieth century, and her contribution to the genre of the shortstory is undeniable. Among her eighty-eight short stories, she casts lighton the delineation of the character’s inner world, rendering the details thatshe observes from the angle of sound, light and color. This paper sets outto analyze Mansfield’s short stories “A Cup of Tea”,“The Doll’s House”,“The Singing Lesson” and “Miss Brill” from the stylistic perspective,which combines the thematic significance and aesthetic function with thelinguistic description, connecting the linguistic knowledge with literaryappreciation.The stylistic analysis of this paper depends largely on the theoreticframework proposed in Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction toEnglish Fictional Prose jointly written by Geoffrey N. Leech and MichaelH. Short. Two levels of stylistic features are discussed in this paper, thelinguistic choice and the narrative choice. The linguistic choice touchesupon lexical features, syntactic features and conversational features. The juxtaposition of synonymous words and the phonological feature arediscussed at the lexical level and grammatical and graphological featuresare analyzed at the syntactic level. Besides, conversational features consistof conversational implicatures and turn-taking patterns. The narrativechoice compasses narrative point of view and speech and thoughtpresentation. In terms of the narrative point of view, shift of point of viewand fictional sequencing are included. Free direct speech, free indirectspeech and free indirect thought are listed under the title of speech andthought presentation.