The androgynous ideal in Bliss & other stories by Katherine Mansfield

• Grant number: 13/22626-9
• Support type: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2014
• Effective date (End): July 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal researcher: Cleide Antonia Rapucci
• Grantee: Letícia de Souza Gonçalves
• Supervisor abroad: Karen Benavente
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Glasgow, Scotland
• Associated to the scholarship: 10/16140-8 - The (de)construction of the concept of gender in Katherine Mansfields stories, BP.DR

Abstract

This work aims to study the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield (1888 - 1923) and the context in which Bliss & other stories (1920) is inserted. Contemporary and professional fellow of the English writer and essayist Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield participated actively in the intellectual circles of her generation - among them the Bloomsbury group - and followed the path of women writers of the early twentieth century. We suggest checking the deconstruction of the concept of gender in narratives considering the creation of male and female characters. Thus, this study addresses the response of Bloomsbury group in social and cultural environment of that time and the androgynous mind as a feminist critique implicit in her short stories, demonstrating her social commitment as writer and woman. (AU)