Paru le 01/02/2015 | Broché 197 pages
Public motivé
The Mind's Eye explores the ways in which Alice Munro's first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, establishes the themes that would continue to animate the work of this Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author over the ensuing forty years. Munro is fascinated by the role of the senses, particularly sight, in the perception of the world; by the link between the real world and the world of the imagination; by the way the past haunts the present through unreliable memories that change over the course of time ; and by a sense that secrets and mysteries can be experienced but never entirely understood. Several of the stories - such as "An Ounce of Cure" and "Day of the Butterfly" - read as the narratives of a writer at the beginning of her career, experimenting with the genre of the short story and dealing with autobiographical material from her childhood, youth, and young adulthood. Others - such as "Walker Brothers Cowboy", "Images" and "The Peace of Utrecht" - already reveal Munro's mastery of form, as well as the questions that would become her central preoccupations.
The book's seven chapters address key aspects of Munro's collection: genre; the Gothic and the grotesque; memory and temporality; growing up; gender, mothers and fathers; class; and the artist and society. Although these themes run across several, or in some cases most, of the stories, a few representative stories are given close readings in each chapter, providing an analysis of the stories as distinct narrative units.
Ailsa Cox is Reader in English and Writing at Edge Hill University, UK. She is a short story writer and critic. Her short monograph, Alice Munro, was published by Northcote House in 2004.
Christine Lorre-Johnston is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her research focuses on postcolonial literature and theory and the short story genre.
