Katherine Mansfield and Germany
Influences, Interactions, Afterlives
Janet M Wilson editor Tracy Miao editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:9th Jun '25
£145.00
This title is due to be published on 9th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Katherine Mansfield and Germany focuses on an under-researched yet crucially important aspect of Mansfield’s life and art, her encounter with Germany and all things German: language, culture, society. The chapters will draw on recent critical theories, current research in modernism and biographical approaches to trace the impact of German literature, philosophy and music on Mansfield’s thinking, narrative experimentation and verse composition. This text includes a focus on the 19th century German legacy and influences; on the fairy tale and modernist style; and on poetry and music. The volume explores perspectives on health and alternative healing methods, and Mansfield’s German literary legacies, including critical responses to her first story collection, In a German Pension (1911) and German translations of her stories. It will reassess with cultural, scientific, and intellectual perspectives, the critical but obscure period of her life spent in the Bavarian spa town of Wörishofen in 1909, previously neglected due to Mansfield’s destruction of all personal records relating to this difficult time. That Katherine Mansfield’s early interactions with the literature, language, music, and culture of Germany held a particular fascination for her that indelibly shaped her writing has long been known. For the first time, this influence is examined in chapters that provide another welcome examination of Mansfield’s work from an international, transnational perspective. Katherine Mansfield and Germany turns to the diverse continental landscapes that fashioned Mansfield’s world view and testifies to Germany’s enduring hold on her imagination, so counterpointing and complementing the perception of France as her spiritual home.
"Katherine Mansfield was not her ‘real’ name, but in Germany she chose to have another. What was she doing there, in disguise in a little spa town, married to one man but pregnant to another, submitting herself to the hosings, the ‘overbody wash’, the barefoot walking and vegetarian diet, observing the locals with a wickedly comic yet accurate and essentially charitable eye, and writing brilliant stories about them which she would come to dismiss, wrongly many believe, as ‘juvenile’. There has always been so much mystery about this early period in the life of one destined to ‘alter for good and all our notion of what goes to make a story’ (Elizabethe Bowen), to influence the writing and elicit the envy of Virginia Woolf, to help define by example what is meant by the term ‘literary Modernism’, and to cement herself for ever into the literary consciousness of her homeland, New Zealand. It is to Worishofen her mother brings the young Katherine in 1909, leaving her there to deal with her predicament alone, and returning home to New Zealand to strike her unmanageable daughter out of her will. There more than a hundred years later a small iron statue of Katherine sits reading beside a pond in a woodsy park, a town square bears her name, and a collocation of international scholars gathers to discuss and read papers about the mysteries of her sojourn ‘in a German pension’. The present book publishes their deliberations."
--C.K. Stead, ONZ, CBE, FRSL, Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland
"This elegant and timely volume brings into focus Mansfield’s creative process as it emerged through crucial encounters, influences, and exchanges, from her earliest engagement with 19th century German music and poetry to her legacy in the German Democratic Republic. Katherine Mansfield and Germany contributes new understandings of modernism’s locations and its cultural formations. The essays and introduction are written with inspiring liveliness, sophistication and clarity, making this volume a pleasure to read and learn from."
--Rishona Zimring, Professor of English, Lewis & Clark College
ISBN: 9781032494197
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
280 pages