TY - CHAP
T1 - '"Almost Like a Ghost": Spectral Figures in Alice Munro’s Short Fiction'
AU - Cox, Ailsa
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Alice Munro’s stories derive their power from that which is unspoken, misremembered or concealed. Over her long career, she has mined the ambiguities of memory and perception, as they are shaped by dreams, erotic fantasy, drink, dementia or self-deception. Those who laud or, alternatively, dismiss the realist aspects of the fiction overlook this pronounced engagement with liminal states of consciousness, which, in Munro’s work, undermines the possibility of a fixed, external reality, unconditioned by human perception. Focusing mostly on Munro's late work, I consider the role played by spectral and ghostly figures in evoking a liminal state of consciousness.
AB - Alice Munro’s stories derive their power from that which is unspoken, misremembered or concealed. Over her long career, she has mined the ambiguities of memory and perception, as they are shaped by dreams, erotic fantasy, drink, dementia or self-deception. Those who laud or, alternatively, dismiss the realist aspects of the fiction overlook this pronounced engagement with liminal states of consciousness, which, in Munro’s work, undermines the possibility of a fixed, external reality, unconditioned by human perception. Focusing mostly on Munro's late work, I consider the role played by spectral and ghostly figures in evoking a liminal state of consciousness.
U2 - 10.4324/9781315817040
DO - 10.4324/9781315817040
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9780415738910
T3 - Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
SP - 238
EP - 250
BT - Liminality and the Short Story: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing,
A2 - Achilles, Jochen
A2 - Bergmann, Ina
PB - Routledge
CY - Oxon.
ER -