Abstract

“The Garden Party” and “A Cup of Tea” published in 1920s by Katherine Mansfield are acclaimed as her representative works. Some of her early works suffered fierce attack by its contemporary critics. However, as time goes by, the originality of Mansfield’s work and its rich meaning has gradually discovered and admired by many readers and scholars. Though many scholars have interpreted “The Garden Party” and “A Cup of Tea” from various views, the two works of Mansfield are still worth exploring.
To find the rationality of characters’ alienated manifestation in the short stories and further appreciate its unique and meaningful glamour, this thesis tries to interpret the characters’ alienation phenomenon in the two stories from the perspective of discourse, action, and state of existence, which exist in the alienation theory of Jan Hajda’s and in the modern western literature. In this way, readers can realize the reasons for these two short stories’ glamour and attract a great amount of readers to interpret these in the recent decades.

Key words: Alienation  “The Garden Party”   “A Cup of Tea”

摘 要

《园会》和《一杯茶》是凯瑟琳•曼斯菲尔德的两部代表作，出版于1922年。曼斯菲尔德的早期作品遭到了激烈的批判。随着时间的流逝，人们才渐渐读懂曼斯菲尔德的作品内涵，领略到其深刻意义。尽管已经有很多学者开始从不同角度来解读这两部作品，但是，《园会》和《一杯茶》仍然值得人们继续探索研究。
为了解释《园会》和《一杯茶》中角色异化现象的合理性，并进一步领略其独一无二且意义非凡的魅力, 本论文从言语、行为和生存状态三个角度去解读这两部小说中的角色异化，以便帮助读者们更好地理解和欣赏它们。

关键词：异化 《园会》 《一杯茶》

1 Introduction
“The Garden Party” and “A Cup of Tea”, published in 1920s by Katherine Mansfield, are acclaimed as her representative works. Some of her early works suffered fierce attack by contemporary critics. As time goes by, the originality of Mansfield’s work and its rich meaning has gradually discovered and admired by many readers and scholars. Especially after the Centennial Conference of Katherine Mansfield in 1980s, the diversified interpretations of her works mark the new advancement of the study of Katherine Mansfield. There are various interpretations that help readers appreciate these two short stories better and it is necessary to understand some related notions.