lesson9_background information第三课概要1.pptVIP

1888–1923, British author, born in New Zealand Her original name was Kathleen Beauchamp. She is regarded as one of the masters of the short story. A talented cellist (大提琴演奏家), she did not turn to literature until 1908. Famously, Mansfield remarked risk, risk everything. It was largely through her adventurous spirit, her eagerness to grasp at experience and to succeed in her work, that she became ensnared in disaster. . . If she was never a saint, she was certainly a martyr, and a heroine in her recklessness, her dedication and her courage. Her last words were: I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face. Her Style Mansfields stories, which reveal the influence of Chekhov, are simple in form, luminous and evocative in substance. With delicate plainness they present elusive moments of decision, defeat, and small triumph. Themes: different human relationships interacting with each other; social classes and inequality in bourgeois society; the frenzied exhortation to live, which is central to all her writings; the opposition of convention and nature; the elevation of the great artist as the model for living and, by extension; art as a means of beingreal; the notion that destiny is a function of desiring—to want something strongly enough is to legitimise the means of getting it. In her most persuasive work, Mansfield found a way of pressing the threads of such a credo into the weave of her fiction. The story of the rises and falls in Mansfields popularity is fasci5nating, as it shifts with the major social, political and literary trends. Mansfields portrayal of social classes and the injustices of bourgeois society had obvious appeal to the Chinese. One of the translators, Tang Baoxin, writes: “With remorseless irony she lays bare the hypocrisy and shallowness of the leisured class and their men of letters.” Im so keen upon all women having a definite future—are not you? The idea of sitting and waiting for a husband is absolutely revolting an