ABSTRACT Allan Pasco has noted the relative paucity of critical attempts to define the short story as a genre. Most critics, he suggests, ‘insist upon the story, for the causally and chronologically constructed narrative is generally viewed as central.’ One means of moving beyond causation and chronology, we argue, is by recourse to the concept of the plot genotype, first elaborated by Vladimir Propp in his analysis of the Russian fairy tale. In this essay, we show how a refined Proppian morphology can be used to interpret Katherine Mansfield’s story ‘At “Lehmann’s”’ (1910). In doing so, we offer a model that is capable of accounting for short literary fictions, specifically modernist ones, that critics have tended to regard as ‘plotless.’

中文翻译：

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什么使现代主义短篇小说成为故事？：凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德（Katherine Mansfield）的“在“雷曼的”上”

摘要艾伦·帕斯科（Allan Pasco）指出，将短篇小说定义为一种类型的批评尝试相对较少。他建议，大多数评论家“坚持这个故事，因为通常将因果关系和时间顺序构成的叙述视为中心。” 我们认为，超越因果关系和时间顺序的一种方法是诉诸情节基因型的概念，该基因型是弗拉基米尔·普罗普（Vladimir Propp）在分析俄罗斯童话时首先阐述的。在本文中，我们将展示如何使用精致的Proppian形态来解释凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德（Katherine Mansfield）的故事“在“莱曼氏”中”（1910年）。在这样做的过程中，我们提供了一种模型，该模型能够解释短篇小说，特别是现代主义小说，而批评家们通常认为它们是“无情的”。