The Flourishing Epiphany of “The Garden Party” : A Narratological Investigation of the Concept Epiphany in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Story “The Garden Party”

Abstract: This essay examines the protagonist of Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” (1922), Laura, and her experiences of events that are made insignificant by the rest of the narrative. Gérard Genette’s narratological theory and the concept of epiphany is put forward in the theroertical framework in order to preform this investigation. Morris Beja’s and Liesl Olson’s studies of the epiphany in modernist literature assists the investigation. Thus, with the support of Genette’s narratological theory and the concept of epiphany, this essay examines epiphanic moments in “The Garden Party”. It will also study how these moments transfer on to the reader through multimodal techniques. This argument is supported by Joseph Conrad’s preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’.