Analysis On Modernist Features In Katherine Anne Porter's Three Novelettes

Katherine Anne Porter is a famous American novelist in the 20 th century.With superb writing skills and a unique literary style,she has become a recognized literary stylist in American literary circles.Porter is not a prolific writer,but her works are excellent,which gain the attention and praise of critics.Most of her works are related to her own life experiences and the real life,so literary critics have always defined her works as realism literature,but some of her works are rich in modernist features.This thesis taking Porter's famous novelettes Old Morality,Noon Wine and Pale Horse,Pale Rider as the research objects,discusses modernist features in her works,and strives to enrich readers' understanding of Porter's works.It is no longer limited to realism and understands modernist features contained in Porter's works.First of all,this paper mainly explains the concept of modernist literature,the main modernist features literature and the reasons why Porter's works embody modernist features.modernist literature refers to a kind of literary trend of thought,which is relative to classicism,romanticism,and realism literature.It is a general term for many literary schools that are not completely consistent in many artistic viewpoints and methods.There are two features in modernist literature,the artistic forms and themes.In terms of artistic forms,modernist literary works mostly focus on experimental innovation,employing a large number of symbols and stream of consciousness,and paying more attention to the inner world of the characters in the novels.In terms of themes,the most prominent ones are the severe alienation between man and man,man and society,the exploration on paradox,and the new understanding about the theme of death.Due to Porter's personal experiences in her life and her career as an editor,Porter's works are full of modernist features.Secondly,starting from the artistic forms in Porter's novels,this thesis attempts to explore the artistic creation with modernist consciousness from three aspects:narrative methods,stream-of-consciousness and symbolic technique.In the narrative approaches,the combination of the limited omnipotent point of view and the limited perspective of the characters in the third-person perspective model in Old Morality,makes two different voices appear in the text and gives rise to a certain degree ofirony.The shifts of the limited viewpoint in Noon Wine increases the suspense of the novel.In terms of the stream of consciousness,it focuses on the inner world of people through free association and interior monologue.In Pale Horse,Pale Rider,Porter expresses the heroine Miranda's love for Adam and her hatred for the war.In terms of symbolism,it mainly analyzes the abstract and ambiguous symbols embodied in the novels.In Pale Horse,Pale Rider,the image symbols of the war and epidemic express the theme of death;the contrast of the character symbols in Noon Wine,shows Porter's exploration on the theme of paradox.Thirdly,this thesis focuses on analyzing the themes in Porter's novelettes.Another important modernist feature is the anti-traditional themes.In Old Morality,because of the appearance defects,Eva fails to be recognized by her family and become the marginal person in the family.Her relation alienates between the family members.Miranda,in the process of growing up,constantly broke up the lies in the mouths of the elderly.She also fails to find a sense of existence in such a southern society.Her relationship with the entire southern society has been alienated.In Noon Wine,the standards for judging morality and law,good and evil are not unified,forming the theme of paradox.In Pale Horse,Pale Rider,Porter's understanding about death is not restricted to the fear of death,but surpasses death.Finally,through the analysis on modernist features in Porter's three novelettes,this paper explains the bright modernist colors contained in Porter's three novellas,enriches the scholars' comprehension of her stylistic style and deepens the readers' understanding of her works.Porter is very talented in literary creation,combining modernist techniques with her own writing style.There are the themes of the alienation between man and man,man and society,of the paradox of good and evil,law and morality,and of the fearing and envisaging death that many people in modern life would care about.Modernist features in three novelettes also present Porter's perception and concern for the complex life of modern people.