Abstract
Despite renewed attention to Katherine Mansfield’s writing in recent years, her work continues to be read largely for “its political and emotional sensibilities and so seldom... for the controlled effects of stylistic detail” (New 1999. Reading Mansfield and metaphors of form. McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP: viii). In this article we consider her story “Bliss” in relation to how Mansfield choreographs the interplay between the inner and outer worlds of the central character and the consequences of her textual crafting of this interplay for a reading of the theme of Mansfield’s story. We draw largely on what is now considered “classical” stylistics, that is, stylistics informed by a social-semiotic linguistics (e. g. Butt 1983. Semantic Drift in Verbal Art. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 61, 34–48; Halliday 2002. Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse. Volume 2 in the Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London and New York: Continuum; Hasan 1985. Linguistics, Language and Verbal Art. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University Press; Hasan 1996a. On Teaching Literature Across Cultural Differences. In J. James Ed., The Language-Culture Connection pp. 34–63. Singapore: SEAMEO; Leech and Short 2007. Style in Fiction. 2nd Edition. London. Longman; Semino and Short 2004. Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge; Sotirova 2013. Consciousness in Modernist Fiction: A Stylistic Study. Palgrave Macmillan; Toolan 2001. Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction. Second Edition. Routledge; Toolan 2007. Language. In D. Herman Ed., The Cambridge companion to narrative pp. 231–244. Cambridge University Press;). Given the extensive variety of contributions to “post-classical” or “cognitive narratology” e. g. (Herman 2007. Introduction. In D. Herman (ed.), The Cambridge companion to narrative. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; McHale 2014. Speech Representation. In P. Hühn, J. C. Meister, J. Pier, & W. Schmid Eds., living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. Retrieved from http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/; Palmer 2004. Fictional minds. University of Nebraska Press) we briefly comment on why we have not taken this direction in our analysis.
References
Banfield, A. 1982. Unspeakable sentences: Narration and representation in the language of fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Search in Google Scholar
Bernstein, B. 1971. Class, codes and control. Volume 1: Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Search in Google Scholar
Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, symbolic control & identity: Theory, research, critique. London: Taylor & Francis.Search in Google Scholar
Brooker, P. 2007. Early modernism. In M. Shiach (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the modernist novel, 32–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL052185444X.003Search in Google Scholar
Butt, D. 1983. Semantic drift in verbal art. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 6(1). 34–48.10.1075/aral.6.1.04butSearch in Google Scholar
Cohn, D. 1983. Transparent minds: Narrative modes for presenting consciousness in fiction.Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Damasio, A. 2012. Self comes to mind: Constructing the conscious brain. London: Vintage.Search in Google Scholar
Durkheim, É. 1984. The division of labour in society. New York: The Free Press.10.1007/978-1-349-17729-5Search in Google Scholar
Fludernik, M. 1993. Fictions of language and the languages of fiction. London and New York:Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. & C. M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2014. An introduction to Halliday’s functional grammar: Fourth edition, 3rd edn. London: Arnold.10.4324/9780203783771Search in Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. 2002. Linguistic studies of text and discourse. Volume 2 in the collected works of M.A.K. Halliday. London and New York: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. & W. Greaves. 2008. Intonation in the grammar of English. London and New York: Equinox.Search in Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. 2013. Language evolving: Some systemic functional reflections on the history of meaning. Halliday in the 21st Century Volume 11 in the Collected Works of MAK Halliday pp. 237–253 Bloomsbury.Search in Google Scholar
Hankin, C. A. 1983. Katherine Mansfield and her confessional stories. London: Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-349-05998-0Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 1985. Linguistics, language and verbal art. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 1996a. On teaching literature across cultural differences. In J. James (ed.), The language-culture connection, 34–63. Singapore: SEAMEO.Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 1996b. The ontogenesis of ideology: An interpretation of mother-child talk. In C. Cloran, D. Butt & G. Williams (eds.), Ways of saying: Ways of meaning, 37–50. London: Cassell.Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 2005a. Code, register and dialect 1973. In J. Webster (ed.), Language, society and consciousness: Volume 1 of the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan. London and Oakville: Equinox.Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 2005b. Ways of meaning, ways of learning: Code as an explanatory concept. In J. Webster (ed.), Language society and consciousness. The collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan. Volume 1, Vol. 1, 215–227. London and Oakville: Equinox.10.1080/0142569022000038396Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 2009. Language in the processes of socialization. In J. J. Webster (ed.), Semantic variation: Meaning in society and sociolinguistics. Volume 2 in the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan, 119–179. London/Oakville: Equinox.Search in Google Scholar
Hasan, R. 2011. A timeless journey: On the past and future of present knowledge. In Selected works of Ruqaiya Hasan on applied linguistics, xiv–xliii. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.Search in Google Scholar
Herman, D. 1999. Scripts, sequences, and stories: Elements of a postclassical narratology. PMLA 112(5). 1046–1059.10.2307/463482Search in Google Scholar
Herman, D. 2007. Introduction. In D. Herman (ed.), The Cambridge companion to narrative.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL0521856965Search in Google Scholar
Leech, G. & M. Short. 2007. Style in Fiction, 2nd edn. London. Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Mansfield, K. 1918. Bliss. The English Review 177. 108–119.Search in Google Scholar
McHale, B. 1978. Free indirect discourse: A survey of recent accounts. PTL 1. 249–287.Search in Google Scholar
McHale, B. 1994. Child as ready-made: Baby-talk and the language of dos passos’s children in U.S.A. In E. Goodenough & M. Heberle (eds.), Infant tongues: The voice of the child in literature. Detroit: Wayne State UP. 202–224.Search in Google Scholar
McHale, B. 2014. Speech representation. In P. Hühn, J. C. Meister, J. Pier & W. Schmid (eds.), Living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/Search in Google Scholar
New, W. 1999. Reading Mansfield and metaphors of form. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP.10.1515/9780773567474Search in Google Scholar
Page, N. 1973. Speech in the english novel. London: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Palmer, A. 2004. Fictional minds. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.Search in Google Scholar
Pascal, R. 1977. The dual voice: Free indirect speech and its functioning in the nineteenth-century European novel. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Potter, R. 2012. Modernist literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9780748634330Search in Google Scholar
Ron, M. 1981. Free indirect discourse, mimetic language games and the subject of fiction. Poetics Today 2(2). 17–39.10.2307/1772188Search in Google Scholar
Semino, E. & M. Short. 2004. Corpus stylistics: Speech, writing and thought presentation in a corpus of English writing. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203494073Search in Google Scholar
Shiach, M. 2007. Reading the modernist novel: An introduction. In M. Shiach (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the modernist novel. Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL052185444XSearch in Google Scholar
Sotirova, V. 2013. Consciousness in modernist fiction: A stylistic study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781137307255Search in Google Scholar
Toolan, M. 2001. Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction. 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Toolan, M. 2007. Language. In D. Herman (ed.), The Cambridge companion to narrative, 231–244. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL0521856965.016Search in Google Scholar
Vološinov, V. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, L. Matejka & I. R. Titunik, Trans. New York: Seminar Press.Search in Google Scholar
Vološinov, V. 1988. Literary stylistics: What is language. In L. M O’ Toole & A. Shukman (eds.), Bakhtin school papers: Russian poetics in translation. Volume 10. 93–113. Oxford: University of Essex.Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Inner and outer worlds: speech and thought presentation in Mansfield’s Bliss
- Rethinking image schemas: Containment and Emotion in Greek Poetry
- “Shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady”: Shakespeare’s use of taste words
- Textual properties and attentional windowing: A cognitive grammatical account of Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Inner and outer worlds: speech and thought presentation in Mansfield’s Bliss
- Rethinking image schemas: Containment and Emotion in Greek Poetry
- “Shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady”: Shakespeare’s use of taste words
- Textual properties and attentional windowing: A cognitive grammatical account of Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers