Canon, Colony, and Critical Expectation -- - Reading and Writing -- - Reading Reading -- - In the Act of Writing: Manuscript Practice -- - A Catalogue of Forms -- - Metaphors of Form -- - Reading for form -- - Reiteration: Stories of Static Action -- - Overturns: Stories of Deferral -- - After and Before: The Epilogues and "Prelude" -- - The Art of Reconstruction: Reading "The Escape."
"Taking an innovative approach to criticism, Reading Mansfield and Metaphors of Form demonstrates how Mansfield's stylistic practice both embodies and conveys her analysis of social and psychological trauma through a "metaphoric" use of literary form. New argues that the stories are neither simple vehicles for conveying emotional states nor neutral representations of moments in time but carefully crafted models, or correlatives, of social and psychological conditions of understanding. He elucidates a number of formal strategies, such as sequence, reversal, negation, repetition, deferral, and reconstruction, and then applies them to a wide range of Mansfield's stories, including such favorites as "Prelude," "The Voyage," "The Little Governess," and "Je ne parle pas francais.""--Jacket
