Alice Munro: Nobel Prize-winning Master of the Contemporary Short Story

This article surveys Alice Munro’s achievements and consists of four parts: Alice Munro and the Nobel Prize; From Canadian Small Town Life to Global Literary Renown; Alice Munro’s Art of the Short Story: Oeuvre, Characteristics, Poetics; Exemplary Text Analysis: Alice Munro, “Fiction.” The article focuses on the virtuosity of Munro’s short story poetics and how she breaks with traditional rules of short story writing for her purposes. The poetological analysis is complemented by a detailed analysis of one of her exceptionally well-constructed and moving stories, “Fiction” (2007), which is particularly suitable for teaching and representative of Munro’s mastery of the short story form.Cet article considère les succès d’Alice Munro et consiste en quatre parties : Alice Munro et le Prix Nobel ; De sa vie dans une petite ville du Canada à une renommée internationale en littérature ; L’art de la nouvelle d’Alice Munro : l’oeuvre, les traits caractéristiques, la poétique ; L’analyse d’un texte exemplaire : Alice Munro, « Fiction ». L’article se concentre sur la virtuosité de la poétique de Munro dans l’écriture de la nouvelle et sur sa manière de rompre avec les règles traditionnelles de l’écriture de la nouvelle pour imposer y son propre tempo. L’analyse poétologique est ici complétée par une analyse détaillée d’une de ses nouvelles, « Fiction » (2007) qui est particulièrement émouvante et exceptionnellement bien construite. Elle est aussi particulièrement bien adaptée à l’enseignement car elle reflète l’exceptionnelle maîtrise de la forme de la nouvelle, par Munro

Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet article propose une lecture écocritique de la fiction étatsunienne contemporaine portant sur la frontière entre le Canada et les États-Unis, en étudiant le portrait donné par Jim Lynch de la région frontalière entre la Colombie-Britannique et Washington dans son roman Border Songs, paru en 2009. L’article soutient que l’étude, dans les textes sur la frontière, des acteurs environnementaux transnationaux – dans ce cas-ci, la marijuana, les migrants humains et les oiseaux migratoires – jette un jour nouveau sur la contingence des limites territoriales politiques, des problèmes d’échelle et des discours sur le risque et la sécurité des régions transfrontalières après les évènements du 11 septembre 2001. Il suggère également qu’en élargissant l’analyse de l’activité transfrontalière pour y inclure les phénomènes environnementaux, on brouille de façon productive les concepts de nature et d’appartenance régionale d’une époque marquée par les changements climatiques et la mondialisation de l’économie

Myth and Intersections of Myth and Gender in Canadian Culture : Margaret Atwood’s Revision of the 'Odyssey' in 'The Penelopiad'

The first part of the article deals with the national myths of Canada. It demonstrates that the long-time supposed lack of myths in Canada may itself be regarded as a myth. After presenting useful meanings of the term myth, the intersections of myth/mythology and gender are considered, both in Canadian culture and in Greek mythology. Linking Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—the canonized beginnings of Western literature and their foundation on ancient myth—with Canadian culture, Margaret Atwood’s works and their treatment of ancient and social myths are then focussed on, particularly her revisionist rewriting of Homer’s Odyssey in her novel The Penelopiad (2005). This women-centered rewriting of the originally male-dominated story starts from two issues: what led to the hanging of the 12 maids, and what was Penelope really up to? Among the results are an intriguing re-conception of the original main characters, an upgrading of female domestic life, and a debunking not only of Odysseus and his supposedly heroic deeds but also of the authority of ancient myths where precarious not least concerning their conception of gender and gender relations.publishe

Carol Shields, "Our Men and Women" (1999)

Beginning in the 1890s, reaching its first full realization by modernist writers in the 1920s, and brought to its heyday during the Canadian Renaissance starting in the 1960s, the short story has become Canada's flagship genre. It continues to attract the country's most accomplished and innovative writers today, among them Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Clark Blaise, and many others. Yet in contrast to the stature and popularity of the genre and the writers who partake in it, surprisingly little literary criticism has been devoted to the Canadian short story. This book redresses that imbalance by providing the first collection of critical interpretations of thirty well-known and often-anthologized Canadian short stories from the genre's beginnings through the twentieth century. A historical survey of the genre introduces the volume and a timeline comparing the genre's development in Canada, the US, and Great Britain completes it. Geared both to specialists in and students of Canadian literature, the volume is of particular benefit to the latter because it provides not only a collection of interpretations, but a comprehensive introduction to the history of the Canadian short story

Comparing Tense and Aspect in Pidgins and Creoles: Dahl's Questionnaire and Beyond

Schröder A, Hackert S. Comparing Tense and Aspect in Pidgins and Creoles: Dahl's Questionnaire and Beyond. In: Mergenthal S, Nischik R, eds. Anglistentag 2013 Konstanz. Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; 2014: 349-360

Comparison and Comparability in Language Studies: An Introduction

Schröder A, Schneider KP. Comparison and Comparability in Language Studies: An Introduction. In: Mergenthal S, Nischik R, eds. Anglistentag 2013 Konstanz. Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; 2014: 303-307