The essay analyses the influence of a mode of recollection perfected in the Romantic era by William Wordsworth on the short stories of the ‘Burnell cycle’ by Katherine Mansfield. The aim is to propose a grammar of modernist memory that, while innovative, can and should be read as a manifest legacy of the mnestic epiphany of Wordswor-thian “spots of time”. Relying on both philological data and general reflections on the concept of influence and interconnection between literary epochs, the essay focuses on some emblematic moments of well-known stories such as “Prelude” and “At the Bay”. In conclusion, the essay attempts to interpret the irenic and direct relationship between Mansfield and her Romantic ‘forefathers’ within the debate on the legacies of Romantic poetry in the early twentieth century, made famous by T. S. Eliot’s notorious anti-Romanticism.
Preludi (neo)romantici. Ricordare l’infanzia nei racconti di Katherine Mansfield
Paolo Bugliani
2024-01-01
Abstract
The essay analyses the influence of a mode of recollection perfected in the Romantic era by William Wordsworth on the short stories of the ‘Burnell cycle’ by Katherine Mansfield. The aim is to propose a grammar of modernist memory that, while innovative, can and should be read as a manifest legacy of the mnestic epiphany of Wordswor-thian “spots of time”. Relying on both philological data and general reflections on the concept of influence and interconnection between literary epochs, the essay focuses on some emblematic moments of well-known stories such as “Prelude” and “At the Bay”. In conclusion, the essay attempts to interpret the irenic and direct relationship between Mansfield and her Romantic ‘forefathers’ within the debate on the legacies of Romantic poetry in the early twentieth century, made famous by T. S. Eliot’s notorious anti-Romanticism.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
