Alice Munro and the Art of Time

Laura K. Davis

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781772128017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772128208
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Alice Munro and the Art of Time reveals how one of the world's greatest writers of short stories challenged and reconfigured traditional assumptions about time. In chapters that analyze selected stories and collections from across Munro's career, Laura K. Davis examines the formal and conceptual function of temporality in Munro's oeuvre, considering the relationship between the past and the present, material experiences of being, story structure, memory, and memoir. Clear and compelling interpretations of Munro's stories offer insights into her writing process, her representations of character and setting, and the complexities of her narrative techniques—which often evade linearity and chronology, emphasizing, instead, revision, repetition, and the body. By highlighting the connections between time and various tropes in Munro's stories, including identity, ephemerality, and environmental change, this study provides new, exciting avenues for engaging with Munro's work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 | Genre, Narrative, and Time in Lives of Girls and Women
• 2 | The Past and the Present in Who Do You Think You Are?
• 3 | Time and Corporeality: “Lichen” and “White Dump” in The Progress of Love
• 4 | Time and Narrative Framing: “Friend of My Youth” and “Meneseteung” in Friend of My Youth
• 5 | Memory and Retrospect: “Fiction” and “Child’s Play” in Too Much Happiness
• 6 | Time and Life Writing: “Corrie,” “The Eye,” and “Dear Life” in Dear Life
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author