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A Comparative Study of the Concept of Time: Status and Age in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield

Received: 11 February 2018     Accepted: 27 March 2018     Published: 8 May 2018
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Abstract

Modernism brought with itself a great change to the philosophical and scientific ideas. Philosophies about time were not free from this change and the French philosopher Henri Bergson reinterpreted time. He divided time into specialized (linear time) and duration. The artist and the writers of the modern era were much influenced by these ideas and Katherine Mansfield was among this group. She made use of new techniques and methods in order to write her short stories. One of the important characteristic of her stories is the shift in time that she uses, and plunging into the consciousness of her characters in order to show their inner time and world. Her characters are either rooted in their past and totally forget about linear time, or they are slaves of the linear time allowing it to influence their life. Her stories show that some people fit very well with the clock and some do not. Her characters perceive time differently according to the age and social conditions that they are living in. The aim of this study is to explore how Mansfield deals with time in her stories and what methods she uses to demonstrate time in them from Bergson’s point of view. It will also investigate the significance of time for her characters and will show whether they can fit with the clock or not. Finally, it will analyze how being in a certain age and class will affect the way people perceive time.

Published in International Journal of Philosophy (Volume 6, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12
Page(s) 8-18
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2018. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Bergson, Short Story, Modernism, Time, Linear Time, Duration

References
[1] Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
[2] Alonso, Pilar R. “The Role of Intersentential Connectives in Complex Narrative Discourse: Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Garden Party’.” Miscelanea: A Journal of English and American Studies 17. 1996: 17-38.
[3] Bergson, Henry. Creative Evolution. Trans. Arthur Mitchell. London: Macmillan, 1911.
[4] Matter and Memory. Trans. Nancy Margaret Paul, and W. Scott Palmer. London: Allen and Unwin, 1911.
[5] Time and Freewill: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Arthur’s Preface. London: Riverside press, [1957].
[6] Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
[7] Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. New York: Dover Publications, 1998.
[8] Drewery, Claire. Modernist Short Fiction by Woman: The liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclaire and Virginia Woolf. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011.
[9] Gillies, Mary Ann. “Bergsonism: ‘Time out of Mind’.” A Concise Companion to Modernism. Ed. Davidn Bradshaw. Malden: Blackwell, 2003. 95-115.
[10] Henri Bergson and British Modernism. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996.
[11] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. Faust. Trans. Bayard Taylor. New York: Echo Library, 2006.
[12] Hanson, Clare. “The Aesthetic of Katherine Mansfield.” Diss. University of Reading, 1980.
[13] Joetze, Steffi. Literary Modernism: Katherine Mansfield and the Short Story. Norderstedt: Druck Und Bindung, 2010.
[14] Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
[15] Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space: 1889-1918. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003.
[16] Mansfield, Katherine. Collected stories of Katherine Mansfield. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth editions limited, 2006.
[17] Mendilow, A. A. Time and the novel. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.
[18] Meyerhoff, Hans. Time in Literature. Engleweed Cliffs: University of California Press.
[19] Morrow, Patrick D. Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction. n. p. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993.
[20] Nakano, Eiko. “One or Many: Bergsonian Readings of Katherine Mansfield’s Modernism.” Diss. University of Sterling, 2005.
[21] New, William H. Reading Mansfield and Metaphors of Form. Quebec: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1999.
[22] Poulet, Georges. Studies in Human Time. London: The John Hopkins Press, 1956.
[23] Smith, Angela. “As Fastidious as though I wrote with acid’: Katherine Mansfield, J. D. Fergusson and the Rhythm Group in Paris.” Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society 3. 2011: 4-20.
[24] Stevenson, Randall. Modernist Fiction: an Introduction. Hemel Hemstead: Harvester.
[25] Greenwich Meanings: Clocks and Things in Modernist and Postmodernist Fiction.” The Yearbook of English Studies 30. 2000: 124-136.
[26] Wild, John. The Challenge of Existensialism. California: Indiana UP, 1966.
[27] Zerzan, John. Time and its Discontents. Berkley: University of California Press, 1962.
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  • APA Style

    Maryam Jafari, Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh. (2018). A Comparative Study of the Concept of Time: Status and Age in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield. International Journal of Philosophy, 6(1), 8-18. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12

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    ACS Style

    Maryam Jafari; Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh. A Comparative Study of the Concept of Time: Status and Age in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield. Int. J. Philos. 2018, 6(1), 8-18. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12

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    AMA Style

    Maryam Jafari, Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh. A Comparative Study of the Concept of Time: Status and Age in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield. Int J Philos. 2018;6(1):8-18. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12,
      author = {Maryam Jafari and Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh},
      title = {A Comparative Study of the Concept of Time: Status and Age in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield},
      journal = {International Journal of Philosophy},
      volume = {6},
      number = {1},
      pages = {8-18},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20180601.12},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijp.20180601.12},
      abstract = {Modernism brought with itself a great change to the philosophical and scientific ideas. Philosophies about time were not free from this change and the French philosopher Henri Bergson reinterpreted time. He divided time into specialized (linear time) and duration. The artist and the writers of the modern era were much influenced by these ideas and Katherine Mansfield was among this group. She made use of new techniques and methods in order to write her short stories. One of the important characteristic of her stories is the shift in time that she uses, and plunging into the consciousness of her characters in order to show their inner time and world. Her characters are either rooted in their past and totally forget about linear time, or they are slaves of the linear time allowing it to influence their life. Her stories show that some people fit very well with the clock and some do not. Her characters perceive time differently according to the age and social conditions that they are living in. The aim of this study is to explore how Mansfield deals with time in her stories and what methods she uses to demonstrate time in them from Bergson’s point of view. It will also investigate the significance of time for her characters and will show whether they can fit with the clock or not. Finally, it will analyze how being in a certain age and class will affect the way people perceive time.},
     year = {2018}
    }
    

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    AB  - Modernism brought with itself a great change to the philosophical and scientific ideas. Philosophies about time were not free from this change and the French philosopher Henri Bergson reinterpreted time. He divided time into specialized (linear time) and duration. The artist and the writers of the modern era were much influenced by these ideas and Katherine Mansfield was among this group. She made use of new techniques and methods in order to write her short stories. One of the important characteristic of her stories is the shift in time that she uses, and plunging into the consciousness of her characters in order to show their inner time and world. Her characters are either rooted in their past and totally forget about linear time, or they are slaves of the linear time allowing it to influence their life. Her stories show that some people fit very well with the clock and some do not. Her characters perceive time differently according to the age and social conditions that they are living in. The aim of this study is to explore how Mansfield deals with time in her stories and what methods she uses to demonstrate time in them from Bergson’s point of view. It will also investigate the significance of time for her characters and will show whether they can fit with the clock or not. Finally, it will analyze how being in a certain age and class will affect the way people perceive time.
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Author Information
  • Department of English Literature, Science and Research Branch University, Tehran, Iran

  • Young Researchers and Elite Club, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

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