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Alice Munro’s Miraculous Art

Critical Essays

edited by Janice Fiamengo & Gerald Lynch

Publisher
University of Ottawa Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2017
Subjects
Women Authors
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780776624358
    Publish Date
    Feb 2017
    List Price
    $29.99

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Description

Alice Munro’s Miraculous Art is a collection of sixteen original essays on Nobel laureate Alice Munro’s writings. The volume covers the entirety of Munro’s career, from the first stories she published in the early 1950s as an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario to her final books. It offers an enlightening range of approaches and interpretive strategies, and provides many new perspectives, reconsidered positions and analyses that will enhance the reading, teaching, and appreciation of Munro’s remarkable—indeed miraculous—work.
Following the editors’ introduction—which surveys Munro’s recurrent themes, explains the design of the book, and summarizes each contribution—Munro biographer Robert Thacker contributes a substantial bio-critical introduction to her career. The book is then divided into three sections, focusing on Munro’s characteristic forms, themes, and most notable literary effects.
Ce livre est publié en anglais.

About the authors

Janice Fiamengo is Full Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, specializing in early Canadian literature. She is the author of The Women’s Page (University of Toronto Press, 2008) and of numerous journal articles on Canadian women writers.

Janice Fiamengo's profile page

Gerald Lynch was born in Ireland, where he frequently visits, and grew up in Canada. Omphalos is his sixth book of fiction. In 2015 Signature Editions published Missing Children, his fifth, the novel that introduced Detective Kevin Beldon. These novels were preceded by Troutstream, Exotic Dancers, and two books of short stories, Kisbey and One’s Company. A Professor mainly of Canadian literature at the University of Ottawa (occasionally offering a seminar in contemporary Irish fiction), earlier this year Gerald published the co-edited Alice Munro's Miraculous Art: Critical Essays. He has edited a number of other books and published many short stories, essays, and reviews, and had his work translated into a number of languages. He has also authored two books of non-fiction, Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity and The One and the Many: Canadian Short Story Cycles. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the gold award for short fiction in Canada’s National Magazine Awards.

Gerald Lynch's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Janice Fiamengo and Gerald Lynch’s edited collection of essays on Alice Munro brings together a number of rigorous pieces from scholars across the country on one of Canada’s best writers....Taken together, the essays collected in Alice Munro’s Miraculous Art make an important addition to the substantial corpus of literary criticism on Munro, incorporating new and important perspectives on the beloved Canadian short story writer.

Laura K. Davis

Alice Munro's Miraculous Art amply illustrates the complexity, multi-layeredness and ambiguities of Munro's work because (not in spite) of this narrow frame - with not a "defensive tone" to speak of.

Marion Rankine

Munro’s characteristic themes are delineated in five close critical readings of particular stories illustrating her reworking of core materials over decades, creating a multidimensional effect in her treatment of female sexual desire and erotic fantasy, mother–daughter relations, situations of social unease, threat, and betrayal.

British Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 32, nos 1–2 https://doi.org/10.3828/bjcs.2020.8