Before I Say Goodbye

Alice Munro published in 2012 her last collection of short stories, Dear Life, which includes “Finale”, a quartet of stories introduced by the author in semiautobiographical terms. The relevance of the themes addressed is, as may be inferred, significant in relation to her life and previous work. In fact, they echo her first two collections of short stories —Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) and Lives of Girls and Women (1971)— not only in motifs and events, but also in style. This paper analyses and compares this last section —Munro’s conclusive contribution to the literary world— with her early work to establish joint features and similarities in order to support and extend the often-claimed autobiographical dimension of Munro’s fiction from this unexplored perspective. In addition, this process of analogy has recognised the author’s literary and emotional closure in relation to her mother, a hitherto elusive endeavour in her work.

“RECEITAS PARA INSATISFAÇÃO ETERNA”: IDENTIDADE E SEXUALIDADE EM ANGELA CARTER E ALICE MUNRO

A ficção das escritoras Angela Carter e Alice Munro pode ser lidas como amplamente cientes da importância da sexualidade na construção de identidades e relações de gêneros. Enquanto a ficção de Munro expõe essas relações em um estilo considerado mais realista, a de Carter faz uso de espaços fantásticos para abrigarem a complexidade do tema. Ambas as autoras criam em suas escritas maneiras únicas de representar a sexualidade feminina, oferecendo novas possibilidades de ver o sujeito fora das restritivas representações comumente disponíveis em sua época.

Dialectics of Trauma in the Short Stories of Alice Munro

This paper argues that difficult relationships in human life followed by memories, introspection, retrospection, foreshadow, flashback, and awful remembrances are coloured by pain and trauma. Unresolved trauma affects the way one perceives others and oneself in relation to others, which has a significant impact on relationships and often results in behaviour that is not conducive to healthy relationships. Complicated, disordered feelings and distressing emotions that give rise to anxiety find an expression in relationships, either overtly or covertly. This paper will focus on how the characters, suffering from anxiety due to stressed relationships, in the short stories in The Progress of Love, written by Alice Munro, employ defence mechanisms to repress their trauma and project a different version of themselves as responsible individuals who are capable of leading a normal life. The dialectic of trauma covertly present in the narrative will be unravelled using Judith Herman’s theory of trauma. Further, this analysis will investigate and foreground how the underlying trauma finds indirect expression in complicated relationships.

“As Truthful as Our Notion of the Past Can Ever Be”:

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Alice Munro drew attention in interviews to her rapt admiration for the work of William Maxwell, a writer she has called “my favorite writer in the world.” The two were not close, although they met a few times through their shared association with the New Yorker. In 1988 Munro published an appreciation of Maxwell’s work and, after his death in 2000, agreed to revise it for a tribute volume published in 2004. During those years too, Munro was at work on a family volume she had long contemplated, The View from Castle Rock (2006), one that was inspired in part by and modelled on Maxwell’s Ancestors: A Family History (1971). This article examines the Maxwell-Munro crux as an example of the dynamics of authorship; it is an important example of two compatible writers who, throughout their careers, created narrative rooted in the very stuff of their own experience in place and time—whether seen as fiction, autobiography, or memoir. Each did so in ways that accentuate, for the critic intent on analysing authorship, the play of the past in shaping of any narrative.

Reescribir a Alice Munro: experimentos de lectura creativa con Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Julio Cortázar y Ana María Shua

Este libro surge del interés por indagar en las posibilidades creativas del estudio de una obra literaria. ¿Podemos dar cuenta de la comprensión de un relato a partir de la escritura de otro? En el Semillero de Narrativa y Hermenéutica Literaria de la Universidad EAFIT hicimos el ejercicio de creer que sí y nos embarcamos en el experimento de estudiar a Alice Munro mediante la propia confección de textos narrativos. Cada cuento leído de la autora canadiense dio lugar a otro cuento, escrito esta vez por un semillerista. Quisimos explorar un tipo de hipertexto adicional que se sumara a los ya clásicos metatextos de la reseña, el comentario hermenéutico, el artículo científico, y que, como ellos, fuera la materialización de una ganancia epistemológica a propósito del contacto con el texto semilla.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ARTICSIC DETAIL AS A FACTOR OF PROSE POETICALNESS IN THE SGORT STORIES OF THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN WRITERS

The article considers the role and functions of artistic detail in the contemporary short stories. The investigation involved the flash fiction stories by the American writers written after the year 2020 and several short stories by the outstanding Canadian writer Alice Munro. The aim of the research is determining the major devices of prose poeticalness in these texts and revealing the role of artistic detail in creating poeticalness.Prose poeticalness is defined as such property of a prose text which involves the priority of poetic function and envisages the introduction of poetical features into prose – stylistic convergence, phonetical repetitions, parallelism, rhythm. Stylistic convergence can be considered the most foregrounded device of poeticalness as it involves the accumulation of different stylistic devices which add expressiveness to each other (M.Riffaterre). Our investigation shows that convergences function in strong positions of texts- the initial or final text fragments. Artistic detail is the object or some feature of the object which acquires special importance in the literary text (V.A.Kukharenko). Artistic detail is usually associated with metonymy or synecdoche, but unlike these tropes, it embraces the whole text. In the flash fiction stories and the short stories by A.Munro the major artistic details are objects like a coin (L.Wilson), a brooch (A.Munro), a glove (D.Shea) or a feature of appearance like a bruise (S.Dybek). These details characterize people’s behavior, their dreams and aspirations. Therefore, they symbolize love, friendship, sympathy and give polysemantic character to the narration. Another result of our investigation is determining the metaphoric detail (G.Paley) in the description of the woman, the mother of the defendant. Thus, the emotional effect of the artistic detail is realized in the metaphoric similes comparing the woman to the faded flower. These artistic details in combination with stylistic convergence create the impression of the texts as modern parables. The theoretical novelty of our research lies in the analysis of artistic details from the viewpoint of poeticalnees as well as in revealing the significance of emotional effect for prose poeticalness.The prospects of further research lie in the investigation of poeticalness in other genres of modern prose.

Speech and Thought Presentation in Chance by Alice Munro: A Stylistic Analysis

This study analyses the speech and thought presentation in Chance, a short story written by Alice Munro. The study aims to analyse how the speech and thought of the characters in the short story are presented. The concept of speech and thought presentation is dubious and complex. This study distinguishes speech and thought presentation and identifies either the characters responsible for representing their speech and thought or the narrator whose speech or thought gets to represent in Munro’s short story. The present study follows the speech and thought presentation techniques of Leech and Short (2007). The present study found out how the author used the categories of speech and thought presentation in the short story with all of their categories except DT. The findings of the study revealed a total of 293 speech and thought presentations in the short story. 235 presentations belong to speech presentations, and 58 to thought presentations. FDS and DS are the most occurred speech presentation within the short story which enabled the author to make her characters seem independent of the narrator. The FDS technique suggests that the context of speech in the story is clear enough, referring to whom the speakers are. FIS is the least occurred presentation within the short story. Besides, DT is not found in the whole short story. Munro has given the importance to the external speech rather than internal thought. The study results indicate that wareness towards speech and thought presentations leads to a better understanding of the literary texts.