Abstract
This chapter approaches landscape writing in Alice Munro’s short fiction from an ethical and phenomenological perspective, namely one that envisions landscape as a milieu rather than as a set of pictorial or poetic conventions that aestheticize space. Munro’s landscapes are not meant to be viewed, but rather to be experienced. They originate in the singular coincidence of a voice with the environment, but also in the interactions that bind human lives to the place they inhabit, no matter how precariously. Fully participating in the stories’ ambiguous epiphanies, Munro’s landscapes hold exacting lessons for characters and readers alike as they decipher the traces of an intimate geography.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Bataille, Georges. “La notion de dépense.” Oeuvres complètes 1. Présentation de Michel Foucault, 302–320. Paris: Gallimard, 1970.
Berthin, Christine. “Of Wounds and Cracks and Pits: A Reading of Dear Life.” Alice Munro: Writing for Dear Life. Special Issue of Commonwealth Essays and Studies 37, no. 2 (2015): 79–87.
Besse, Jean-Marc. Voir la terre, six essais sur le paysage et la géographie. Arles: Actes Sud, 2000.
Bigot, Corinne. Alice Munro: Les Silences de la nouvelle. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014.
Carroll, Lewis. “A Mad Tea Party.” In Alice in Wonderland, edited by Donald J. Gray, 54–61, A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1992.
Casey, Edward. Remembering. Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Cassin, Barbara, ed. Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Translated by Steven Rendall, et al. and edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. 2004. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Cawley, A.C., ed. Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays. London: J.M. Dent, 1993.
Chapman, Lyman, and Donald Putnam. The Physiography of Southern Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984 [1951].
Didi-Huberman, Georges. La Ressemblance par contact. Archéologie, anachronisme et modernité de l’empreinte. Paris: Minuit, collection “Paradoxe,” 2008.
Ganteau, Jean-Michel. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Vulnerability in Contemporary British Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
Harrison, Robert Pogue. “Hic Jacet.” In Landscape and Power, edited by W. T. J. Mitchell, 349–364, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Hyde, Michael J., ed. The Ethos of Rhetoric. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
Kristeva, Julia. Soleil noir, dépression et mélancolie. Paris: Gallimard, 1987.
Kroetsch, Robert. “The Ledger.” Completed Field Notes: The Long Poems of Robert Kroetsch, 11–31. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989.
Munro, Alice. “Walker Brothers Cowboy.” Dance of the Happy Shades, 1–18. 1968. London: Vintage, 2000.
———. “Nettles.” Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, 157–188. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2001.
———. “Gravel.” Dear Life, 91–109. New York: Vintage, 2012.
———. “What Do You Want to Know For.” In The View from Castle Rock, 316–340. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Ventura-Daziron, Héliane. “From Accident to Murder: The Ethics of Responsibility in Alice Munro’s ‘The Time of Death’ and ‘Child Play’.” In The Inside of a Shell: Alice Munro’s “Dance of the Happy Shades,” edited by Vanessa Guignery, 156–168. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Omhovère, C. (2018). Gravel and Grief: Alice Munro’s Vulnerable Landscapes. In: DeFalco, A., York, L. (eds) Ethics and Affects in the Fiction of Alice Munro. Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90644-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90644-7_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90643-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90644-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)