A Study On Community Writing In Alice Munro’s Short Stories

As the only female winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in Canada so far,Alice Munro is internationally renowned as the “Canada’ s Chekhov” and “Master of contemporary short stories”.She devotes her life to the creation of short stories,showing the ordinary life of common people in a marginalized town in Canada,and her insight into the subtlety of human nature.This thesis selects three collections of short stories,Dance of Happy Shades,Runaway and Dear Life,as the research objects,and takes “community writing” as the point of penetration to study her creative art.For one thing,the thesis will analyze the reconstruction of community through a thematic study of her short stories;and for another,it will discuss her writing process as a female writer who makes full use of the literary community field to empower women.The thesis includes Introduction,the main body and Conclusion.It begins with an introduction to the writer Alice Munro and her 14 collections of short stories,systematically reviews the research,both at home and abroad,on Munro and her work,pointing out its inadequacy in the study on community writing,and briefly presents the community theory and research methods used in this thesis.Many of Munro’s short stories reflect the urgent need for community construction during the social transformation period of the 20 th century.Therefore,this thesis studies community thought contained in her works based on a close reading of the stories under study and an examination of Munro’s narrative techniques.The main body of the thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter one explores Munro’s portrayal of the spoiled pastoral community life of a traditional Canadian small town during the period of social transformation.In her work,Munro depicts the self-sufficiency of the townspeople in the small town in the period of farming era.However,the material living conditions and their spiritual state of those people have undergone changes to varying degrees when they face the economic crisis and the modernization,resulting in identity anxiety and the lack of sense of belonging.Chapter two applies T(?)nnies’ theory to investigating Munro’s reconstruction of “organic community” from the mother-child relationship,neighborhood and man-world relationship,exploring Munro’s vision of a new community constructed in face of the contradictions and impacts brought by social transformation in her short stories.From the perspective of Munro’s narrative techniques,Chapter three expounds that the essence of her narrative experiments is to participate in the construction of the “organic community”in the field of literary writing through the “authorial voice”.To conclude,the thesis points out that the lack of sense of belonging in the Canadian small town and the anxiety about their own identity are the evidence of the absence of the organic community.They are also the main reasons why Munro emphasizes the interaction of those marginalized characters,and cares about the ordinary life of the townspeople and the relationships between man and the world,which in turn concretely manifests Munro’s profound thoughts about building the Community.The background of Munro’s works is in a period of social transformation,namely,from agricultural to industrial civilization,and from rural towns to cities.During this period,the rise and decline of small towns,the pain and confusion of townspeople,and the ideological and emotional crisis have been reflected and revealed in her works.From this point of view,Munro’s collections are literary works with the characteristics of the time.Many of her short stories embody her reflections on the Community and its shaping.Her narrative techniques manifest community features of sharing and communication between literary texts;her description of small-town life and her feminist perspective reveal the need for human community construction.Her community writing provides a reference for researchers to explore community imagination.From the respect of literary and artistic value,such discussion is not only conducive to the in-depth understanding of Munro and the creative ideas in her work,but also becomes an echo and practice of the construction of a community of shared future for mankind in the current time,which is of realistic and practical significance.