Runaway And Return

Alice Munro, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013, has told readers the stories about women one after another with exquisite and plain writing style, which has started a new age for short stories. Runaway is one of her collections of short stories, published in 2004, by which Alice Munro won the Giller Prize. It is also a representative work of Alice Munro.There are a lot of aspects of narratology studies while this paper mainly analyzes from three aspects, which are narrative voice, narrative perspective and narrative time. The analytic target of this paper is Runaway and its theoretical bases come from the narrative theories of Genette, Luo Gang and Hu Yamin. This paper aims to make a tentative study of text analysis combining with theory. The main contents can be summarized as follows:The introduction part introduces Alice Munro’s literary creations, general idea of Runaway, domestic and international studies on Munro especially on Runaway, research methods, main structure and significance of this study.Chapter one analyzes from the angle of narrative voice, which are illustrated from three different types of narrator, which are “absent”, covert and overt. The change of narrator produces remarkable narrative effects.Chapter two mainly studies on narrative perspective which has close relation with narrative voice while there are differences between them. This chapter involves narrative person, narrative focus and the transformation of narrative perspective.Chapter three puts its emphasis on narrative time. Munro has applied the technique of non-linear narrative time, such as flashback, retroversion; changeable narrative rhythm also enhances the narrative artistry, enriches the literary connotation and deepens the theme.Munro adopts various narrative techniques to narrate stories. The narrative perspective is multiple and changing. On narrative rhythm, she makes the transformation of time and space, memory and reality, which contributes to the jump of plots. It can be confirmed that Alice Munro’s narrative ability is extremely excellent so that she can narrate such attractive and inspiring stories in limited lengths. It can be seen clearly that she prefers to subtle events in daily life and she means to explore how females find an appropriate position in their family and marriage under the complex and varied living condition.