“Country Speech”: Regional and Temporal Linguistic Layering in Alice Munro’s Fiction

Foregrounded reports of remembered speech habits typify Alice Munro’s short fiction. In one story, the author refers to this, almost casually, as “country speech.” I will examine instances of generalized speech tags (such as “As they used to say”) to explore their relation to the creation of spatial and temporal depth in the fictional landscape. Distinctions are established between types of these foregrounded speech tags, and the category of “country speech” is extended to include a related concept of “country manners.” These combine to help create the subtly layered distinctions between place (city, country, small town) and time (decades and generations) that add texture to Munro’s narratives

Sci-fi, Cli-fi or Speculative Fiction: Genre and Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s “Three Novels I Won’t Write Soon”

Margaret Atwood’s short prose piece, “Three Novels I Won’t Write Soon,” poses a conundrum for anyone seeking to place it within a genre. With features of science fiction, speculative fiction and a postmodern prose poem, the text addresses the topic of climate change and its concomitant fiction without offering closure. After examining and attempting to resolve the issue of genre, the paper aligns Atwood’s discourse of indeterminacy with the parallel discourse of climate change as expressed in science writing, in order to account for this text’s unusual structural and stylistic features

Celebrating the Precise, the Paradoxical and the “Pret-ty-Trick-y” in Alice Munro’s Fiction

The contribution introduces the special issue of ELOPE (Vol. 19, No. 1, 2022) and the collection of articles in honour of the doyenne of Canadian short fiction: Alice Munro

Introduction: Atwood at 80

When Margaret Atwood celebrated her 80th birthday in November 2019, there was a feeling that the occasion called for a burst of applause – figuratively speaking. Around Europe, many Canadian scholars and Canadian Studies Associations responded with a range of activities. Slovenia contributed handsomely: first, with an event at the Univerzitetna knjižnica Maribor – Fourscore and More: Margaret Atwood at Eighty – and second, with this special issue dedicated to Atwood’s recent work

Cultural Awareness among First-Year Undergraduate Students of English and Translation

The article presents the results of a culture quiz that was administered among undergraduate students of English and Translation at the University of Maribor in 2019. Comprising twenty items from five domains of culture that the respondents had to identify, the results of the quiz showed that that the students were most familiar with items from the domains of technology and its closely related vocabulary, followed by sports, politics and high culture (drama, literature, ballet). The study also suggested some differences based on respondents’ gender and their high school grade performance in English. The results partly overlap with the results of a similar study from 2007, corroborating that popular culture remains the most recognizable cultural domain among the surveyed students

Cultural Awareness among First-Year Undergraduate Students of English and Translation

The article presents the results of a culture quiz that was administered among undergraduate students of English and Translation at the University of Maribor in 2019. Comprising twenty items from five domains of culture that the respondents had to identify, the results of the quiz showed that that the students were most familiar with items from the domains of technology and its closely related vocabulary, followed by sports, politics and high culture (drama, literature, ballet). The study also suggested some differences based on respondents’ gender and their high school grade performance in English. The results partly overlap with the results of a similar study from 2007, corroborating that popular culture remains the most recognizable cultural domain among the surveyed students

The Almost-Forgotten Flu: K. A. Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider

As awareness of the pandemic nature of what the world faced in early 2020 took hold, several news media began to remind us of what they called the “forgotten flu”: the 1918 Spanish flu (Wilson 2020; Jenkins 2021; Prideaux 2021; Australia story 2020; McGarvey 2020). Simultaneously, scholars of American literature found themselves at odds with these headlines, for to the readers of the modern American fiction the 1918 Spanish flu was synonymous with Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider and was thus far from forgotten but rather indelibly memorialized. Even recent medical journals have referred to Pale Horse, Pale Rider in articles that attempt to put a human face on the experience of pandemic (Bristow 2010; Potter 2013; Spinney 2017). This paper seeks to contribute to that human face by considering Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider as an instance of (1) close recall of a buried moment of war-related and post-war catastrophe, and (2) a modernist experiment in gendered mindscape and trauma survival

The Almost-Forgotten Flu: K. A. Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider

As awareness of the pandemic nature of what the world faced in early 2020 took hold, several news media began to remind us of what they called the “forgotten flu”: the 1918 Spanish flu (Wilson 2020; Jenkins 2021; Prideaux 2021; Australia story 2020; McGarvey 2020). Simultaneously, scholars of American literature found themselves at odds with these headlines, for to the readers of the modern American fiction the 1918 Spanish flu was synonymous with Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider and was thus far from forgotten but rather indelibly memorialized. Even recent medical journals have referred to Pale Horse, Pale Rider in articles that attempt to put a human face on the experience of pandemic (Bristow 2010; Potter 2013; Spinney 2017). This paper seeks to contribute to that human face by considering Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider as an instance of (1) close recall of a buried moment of war-related and post-war catastrophe, and (2) a modernist experiment in gendered mindscape and trauma survival

Margaret Atwood, World-Famous but Yet to Be Discovered by Many Slovene Readers

Margaret Atwood is the only Canadian author whose 80th birthday in 2019 was celebrated by the global academic community. This is not surprising, as she is the most famous Canadian writer, popular also outside literary circles. On this occasion, Slovene Canadianists organized a literary event at the Maribor University Library, which presented an outline of Atwood’s oeuvre and a selection of translated poems and excerpts of prose texts; some of these were translated especially for the event. Of Atwood’s rich and varied oeuvre, only eight novels, a few short fiction pieces and some thirty poems have been translated into Slovene. This article thus aims at presenting those aspects of Atwood’s work which are less know to Slovene readers. It is no secret that Atwood is often labelled a feminist writer, mostly on account of The Handmaid’s Tale and the TV series based on the novel. However, many Slovene readers may not know that she also writes poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature, that she is a committed environmentalist, and that she discussed the problem of “Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth” in a prestigious lecture series. There are not many authors who master as many genres as Atwood and who are so well-received by readers and critics alike. The latter is true of Atwood also in Slovenia, and we can only hope that Slovene publishers will make more of Atwood’s work available to Slovene readers. All the more so since Atwood has no plans to end her career: just before her 80th birthday she was on a tour in Europe promoting her latest novel, The Testaments, and she would have continued touring in 2020 were it not for the COVID pandemic

Gender identity change in a female adolescent transsexual

Two years of individual and milieu therapy are described of a 141/2-year-old girl who had presented with the persistent request to have a sex-change operation since age 12. Her past history was obtained from her parents and the records of the child guidance clinic which evaluated her at 3 years of age. She gives a history of remarkable tomboyism during her latency years and increasing withdrawal from peers and family during early adolescence. The patient's personal and family dynamics are explored, and these major therapeutic themes are discussed. The individual and milieu therapy are described and discussed with some speculation about the reasons for her positive response to psychotherapy. It would appear that this is a rare case of a postpubertal female transsexual reported to have made a gender identity change.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44103/1/10508_2005_Article_BF01541204.pd