Table of Contents

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Table of Contents Contents About This Volume, Charles E. May vii Career, Life, and Influence On Alice Munro, Charles E. May 3 Biography of Alice Munro, Charles E. May 19 Critical Contexts Alice Munro: Critical Reception, Robert Thacker 29 Doing Her Duty and Writing Her Life: Alice Munro’s Cultural and Historical Context, Timothy McIntyre 52 Seduction and Subjectivity: Psychoanalysis and the Fiction of Alice Munro, Naomi Morgenstern 68 Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro: Writers, Women, Canadians, Carol L. Beran 87 Critical Readings “My Mother’s Laocoon Inkwell”: Lives of Girls and Women and the Classical Past, Medrie Purdham 109 Who does rose Think She is? Acting and Being in The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose, David Peck 128 Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love: Free (and) Radical, Mark Levene 142 Friend of My Youth: Alice Munro and the Power of Narrativity, Philip Coleman 160 in Search of the perfect metaphor: The Language of the Short Story and Alice Munro’s “Meneseteung,” J. R. (Tim) Struthers 175 The complex Tangle of Secrets in Alice munro’s Open Secrets, Michael Toolan 195 The houses That Alice munro Built: The community of The Love of a Good Woman, Jeff Birkenstein 212 honest Tricks: Surrogate Authors in Alice munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, David Crouse 228 Narrative, Memory, and Contingency in Alice Munro’s Runaway, Michael Trussler 242 v Alice_Munro.indd 5 9/17/2012 9:01:50 AM “Secretly Devoted to Nature”: Place Sense in Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock, Caitlin Charman 259 “Age Could Be Her Ally”: Late Style in Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness, Ailsa Cox 276 Resources Chronology of Alice Munro’s Life 293 Works by Alice Munro 296 Bibliography 297 About the Editor 301 Contributors 303 vi Critical Insights Alice_Munro.indd 6 9/17/2012 9:01:50 AM.
Recommended publications
  • The Story and Its Writer
    CONTENTS Preface v Introduction: Te Story and Its Writer 1 Part One: Stories 7 Sherman Alexie, Te Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfght in Heaven 9 Isabelle Allende, An Act of Vengeance 15 RELATED CASEBOOK: Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I, 1020; Alejo Car- pentier, On the Marvelous Real in America, 1022; Alejo Carpentier, Te Baroque and the Marvelous Real, 1024; Luis Leal, Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature, 1026; William Gass, Te First Seven Pages of the Boom, 1028; Ursula K. Le Guin, Te Kind of Fiction Most Charac- teristic of Our Times, 1030; Mario Vargas Llosa, Te Prose Style of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, 1034 Sherwood Anderson, Hands 22 RELATED COMMENTARY: Sherwood Anderson, “Form, Not Plot, in the Short Story,” 878 Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings 27 RELATED COMMENTARY: Margaret Atwood, “Reading Blind,” 881 James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 31 RELATED COMMENTARY: James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes, 884 Toni Cade Bambara, Te Lesson 55 RELATED STORY: ZZ Packer, Brownies, 740 Russell Banks, Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat 62 RELATED STORY: Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants, 416 Ann Beattie, Janus 69 Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 73 Jorge Luis Borges, Te South 82 RELATED CASEBOOK: Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I, 1020; Alejo Car- pentier, On the Marvelous Real in America, 1022; Alejo Carpentier, Te xi 00_CHA_6555_FM_i-xx.indd 11 11/06/14 2:46 PM xii CONTENTS Baroque and the Marvelous Real, 1024; Luis Leal, Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature, 1026; William Gass, Te First Seven Pages of the Boom, 1028; Ursula K.
    [Show full text]
  • Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story
    Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story Edited by Oriana Palusci Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story Edited by Oriana Palusci This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Oriana Palusci and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0353-4 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0353-3 CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Alice Munro’s Short Stories in the Anatomy Theatre Oriana Palusci Section I: The Resonance of Language Chapter One ............................................................................................... 13 Dance of Happy Polysemy: The Reverberations of Alice Munro’s Language Héliane Ventura Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27 Too Much Curiosity? The Late Fiction of Alice Munro Janice Kulyk Keefer Section II: Story Bricks Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 45 Alice Munro as the Master
    [Show full text]
  • Cahiers-Papers 53-1
    The Giller Prize (1994–2004) and Scotiabank Giller Prize (2005–2014): A Bibliography Andrew David Irvine* For the price of a meal in this town you can buy all the books. Eat at home and buy the books. Jack Rabinovitch1 Founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch, the Giller Prize was established to honour Rabinovitch’s late wife, the journalist Doris Giller, who had died from cancer a year earlier.2 Since its inception, the prize has served to recognize excellence in Canadian English-language fiction, including both novels and short stories. Initially the award was endowed to provide an annual cash prize of $25,000.3 In 2005, the Giller Prize partnered with Scotiabank to create the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Under the new arrangement, the annual purse doubled in size to $50,000, with $40,000 going to the winner and $2,500 going to each of four additional finalists.4 Beginning in 2008, $50,000 was given to the winner and $5,000 * Andrew Irvine holds the position of Professor and Head of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Errata may be sent to the author at [email protected]. 1 Quoted in Deborah Dundas, “Giller Prize shortlist ‘so good,’ it expands to six,” 6 October 2014, accessed 17 September 2015, www.thestar.com/entertainment/ books/2014/10/06/giller_prize_2014_shortlist_announced.html. 2 “The Giller Prize Story: An Oral History: Part One,” 8 October 2013, accessed 11 November 2014, www.quillandquire.com/awards/2013/10/08/the-giller- prize-story-an-oral-history-part-one; cf.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2016-02 Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013 Thacker, Robert University of Calgary Press Thacker, R. "Reading Alice Munro: 1973-2013." University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51092 book http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca READING ALICE MUNRO, 1973–2013 by Robert Thacker ISBN 978-1-55238-840-2 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your university purchase a print copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected] Cover Art: The artwork on the cover of this book is not open access and falls under traditional copyright provisions; it cannot be reproduced in any way without written permission of the artists and their agents. The cover can be displayed as a complete cover image for the purposes of publicizing this work, but the artwork cannot be extracted from the context of the cover of this specific work without breaching the artist’s copyright. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This open-access work is published under a Creative Commons licence. This means that you are free to copy, distribute, display or perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to its authors and publisher, that you do not use this work for any commercial gain in any form, and that you in no way alter, transform, or build on the work outside of its use in normal academic scholarship without our express permission.
    [Show full text]
  • Being Gender/Doing Gender, in Alice Munro and Pedro Almadovar
    Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-25-2017 10:00 AM Being Gender/Doing Gender, in Alice Munro and Pedro Almadovar Bahareh Nadimi Farrokh The Univesity of Western Ontario Supervisor Professor Christine Roulston The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Bahareh Nadimi Farrokh 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Nadimi Farrokh, Bahareh, "Being Gender/Doing Gender, in Alice Munro and Pedro Almadovar" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5000. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5000 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract In this thesis, I compare the short stories, “Boys and Girls” and “The Albanian Virgin”, by Alice Munro, with two films, La Mala Educación and La Piel Que Habito, by Pedro Almodóvar. This comparison analyzes how these authors conceive gender as a doing and a performance, and as culturally constructed rather than biologically determined. My main theoretical framework is Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as developed in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In my first chapter, I compare “Boys and Girls” with La Mala Educación, and in the second chapter, I compare “The Albanian Virgin” with La Piel Que Habito, to illustrate the multiple ways in which gender is constructed according to Munro and Almodóvar.
    [Show full text]
  • The Analysis of Female Consciousness in Alice Munro's Novels
    2020 3rd International Conference on Arts, Linguistics, Literature and Humanities (ICALLH 2020) The Analysis of Female Consciousness in Alice Munro's Novels Haixia Zhang Ningxia Normal University, Guyuan, China Keywords: Alice munro, Novel, Female, Female consciousness Abstract: Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro is an evergreen tree in the Canadian literary world. She began to publish works in the late 1960s, and many of her works have gained worldwide reputation during her more than 50 years of writing career. This article draws the outline of the trajectory of women’s lives in Munro’s novels, analyzes the heroine’s living environment in the works and their relationship with men and nature, and explores the significant contributions that Munro’s literary works have made to the development of female consciousness for more than half a century with positive impact. 1. Introduction Alice Munro in Canada has a high reputation in the international society, it is not only depend on her works and success, but also because of her works with highly overall level, therefore, Alice Munro also became one of the 100 most influential contemporary writers. Under her ceaseless effort, she won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013, became the 13th female winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and accepted by more and more people in the world, it is not common in the history of the Nobel Prize for literature, which is out of her work, certainly also of her personal effort. [1] Alice Munro’s works should be undoubtedly with a very high artistic value, but for the thought of female consciousness in her works still remains to be further discussed.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Review - Margaret Atwood, the Testaments (New York: Doubleday, 2019)
    Bridgewater Review Volume 39 Issue 1 Article 13 4-2020 Book Review - Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (New York: Doubleday, 2019) Halina Adams Bridgewater State University Follow this and additional works at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev Recommended Citation Adams, Halina (2020). Book Review - Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (New York: Doubleday, 2019). Bridgewater Review, 39(1), 36-37. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol39/iss1/13 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. BOOK REVIEWS Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (New York: Aunt Lydia, and new characters Agnes Doubleday, 2019). Jemima and Daisy. This text attempts to redeem Aunt Lydia by revealing her Halina Adams back story: her life before Gilead, how she was converted to the Aunts, and ne image in Margaret Atwood’s The her current mission to undermine the regime. Atwood includes an epigraph Testaments (2019) stands out to me—not only from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda pre- as a commentary on our age of “alternative sumably to explain the humanization O of this previously repulsive character: facts,” but also as a gloss on how we might read “Every woman is supposed to have this follow up to her popular and highly regarded the same set of motives, or else to be a The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The image appears in a monster.” Yet, Aunt Lydia’s metamor- conversation between two Aunts-in-training, called phosis from arch believer to revolu- tionary seems a bit like retconning “Supplicants.” Discussing the motto of the Aunt at the expense of her deliciously evil school, one of the Supplicants notes that Latin was characterization in the original novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Identity, Gender, and Belonging In
    UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, TRINITY COLLEGE Explorations of “an alien past”: Identity, Gender, and Belonging in the Short Fiction of Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Margaret Atwood A Thesis submitted to the School of English at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Kate Smyth 2019 Declaration I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. ______________________________ Kate Smyth i Table of Contents Summary .......................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iv List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................................... v Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Part I: Mavis Gallant Chapter 1: “At Home” and “Abroad”: Exile in Mavis Gallant’s Canadian and Paris Stories ................ 28 Chapter 2: “Subversive Possibilities”:
    [Show full text]
  • Abortion in Canadian Literature
    Citation for the following article: Jeff Koloze, “Abortion in Canadian Literature: Comparisons with American Literature and Canada’s Unique Contributions,” Proceedings of the Nineteenth University Faculty for Life Conference at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minneapolis MN (2009), ed. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. (Washington, D.C.: University Faculty for Life, 2013), pp. 207-225. Abortion in Canadian Literature: Comparisons with American Literature and Canada’s Unique Contributions Jeff Koloze A BSTRACT: After reviewing the scholarship on abortion in twentieth- century Canadian fiction written in English, the essay discusses various abortion scenes in major Canadian works by comparing and contrasting them with major works from the United States. The essay then discusses post-abortion syndrome and illustrates passages in Canadian fiction on abortion where numerous characters display features of that syndrome. OCATING CANADIAN NOVELS concerned with abortion often approximates an archaeological dig since compilations of literary Lcriticism frequently obscure, minimize, or lack references to abortion. Margaret Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature1 has much to say about babies being an inappropriate solution for a plot’s denouement, calling this technique the “Baby Ex Machina,”2 1 Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 1972). 2 Atwood, Survival, p. 247. The “Baby Ex Machina” denouement is well- established in Canadian fiction. Frederick Philip Grove’s 1925 Settlers of the Marsh (Toronto ON: Penguin Canada,2006) ends with two instances of children bringing closure to an otherwise disastrous plot: Bobby, a young man befriended by Niels, the main character, and encouraged to do well, has five children; Ellen, the love of Niels’s life, realizes at novel’s end that she needs to be a mother (pp.
    [Show full text]
  • “On Being a Woman Writer”: Atwood's Canadian and Feminist Contexts
    “On Being a Woman Writer”: Atwood’s Canadian and Feminist Contexts Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson When you begin to write you’re in love with the language, the act of cre- ation, with yourself partly; but as you go on, the writing—if you follow it—will take you places you never intended to go and show you things you would never otherwise have seen. I began as a profoundly apolitical writer, but then I began to do what all novelists and some poets do: I began to describe the world around me. (Atwood, Second Words 15) Margaret Atwood began her writing career at a time when Canadian literature did not have a clearly established canon or identity. In fact, she has been credited with helping to “invent” Canadian literature as a critical concept, both because she herself is a proli¿c poet, novelist and short story writer, but also because she has published books of literary and cultural criticism throughout her long career. As she noted in the early 1970s, “Until recently, reading Canadian literature has been for me and for everyone else who did it a personal interest, since it was not taught, required or even mentioned (except with derision) in the public sphere” (Survival 13). That attitude has clearly changed, not only be- cause of Atwood’s own position as a very important cultural icon, but also because of the preeminence of contemporary Canadian writers on the world literary stage. Atwood’s contemporaries include Alice Mun- ro, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, and Marian Engel, among oth- ers; Joan Barfoot and Michael Ondaatje are only a few years younger than she is.
    [Show full text]
  • "Spelling:" Alice Munro and the Caretaking Daughter
    “SPELLING”: ALICE MUNRO AND THE CARETAKING DAUGHTER Debra Nicholson A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts August 2010 Committee: Dr. Bill Albertini, Advisor Dr. Beth Casey, Emeritus © 2010 Debra Nicholson All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Dr. Bill Albertini, Advisor Alice Munro, the renowned Canadian short story writer, has written, over the course of her long career, no fewer than seventeen stories that feature an ill mother as the primary or tangential theme in a daughter’s narrative. While some critics focus on uncovering autobiographical elements of the stories (Munro’s mother endured early-onset Parkinson’s disease), and others vaguely complain that Munro is merely re-writing the same story again and again, no critic has investigated the range and depth of affect produced by maternal illness proffered in her stories, a topic that appears to be a major concern of Munro’s creative life. Not only is it important to analyze the stories of daughters and their ill mothers because of the topic’s importance to Munro, it is essential to illuminate the texts’ contributions to the intersecting discourses of illness, death, and daughters and mothers. This thesis serves to initiate this critical discussion. An analysis of Munro’s story, “Spelling,” provides fruitful material for the discussion of the discourse of caretaking. I track Rose’s caretaking journey by first discussing her entrapment in the gendered norms of caretaking. Then, I argue that Rose capitulates to the discourse of sacrificial caretaking by desiring to care for Flo in a full-time capacity.
    [Show full text]
  • Margaret Atwood: a Canadian Novelist
    Margaret Atwood: A Canadian Novelist Introduction Contents Margaret Atwood is a name nearly all Canadians know, and now that she has finally won the prestigious Booker Prize her already considerable international Introduction reputation is greatly enhanced. Canadians, however, are often criticized for not celebrating our cultural icons, whether it be from a collective sense of modesty or The Range of The Blind uncertainty as to the elusive Canadian identity. Be that as it may, we do recognize Assassin Margaret Atwood as one of our greatest writers, and this international win for her latest novel, The Blind Assassin, certainly gives us reason to reappraise her Not Just A Novelist considerable contribution to that genre of literature referred to as CanLit. The Booker Prize-considered one of the world's most important literary awards-is given each year to what is judged the best original full-length novel written by a citizen of Subjectivity, Literature, the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Atwood's novels have been and The Blind Assassin nominated for the Booker three times, and now The Blind Assassin takes its place among the very best literary works of fiction in the world. As Canadians, we have Themes of Margaret good reason to recognize and validate the talent and achievements of our artists, Atwood and we do so. "Canadian content" is a standard qualifier and indicator of success for us, whether in the form of a Jim Carrey movie, the music of Céline Dion, or the Portraying Women's Lives comedy of John Candy or Dan Ackroyd.
    [Show full text]