A Study Of Alice Munro’s Runaway From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Alice Munro, the 13^th female winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, is hailed as “modern Chekhov” and “master of contemporary short stories”. She has gained prestigious reputation for the rich contents, unique style and profound connotation in her short stories. Munro mainly focuses on portraying the life of ordinary people, especially women in Canada. She is skilled at capturing their complicated psychological activities and makes readers experience all kinds of emotional feelings. Runaway, the most representative collection of Munro’s short stories, has drawn more and more attention of the scholars at home and abroad, whose researches are mostly about its feminism, theme and narrative strategy, whereas few of them have made systemic analysis of her short stories in terms of ethical literary criticism. Based on the theory of ethical literary criticism and taking the short stories in Runaway as examples, this thesis intends to classify the ethical relationship, elucidate the ethical dilemma, and explore the underlying ethical reasons from the three aspects of ethical identity, ethical choice and returning to ethics.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction part respectively presents Alice Munro’s representative works, domestic and overseas research on Munro, as well as the research methods of the thesis. The body part is divided into four chapters. Chapter One introduces the theoretical basis including the origin and development of ethical literary criticism and makes a general presentation of the ethical issues in Munro’s short stories. Chapter Two mainly analyzes the social and family ethical identities of the heroines in Runaway and depicts the negative consequences by deviating ethical identities. Chapter Three explores the ethical choices of the heroines in different situations from the standpoint of sphinx factor raised by Nie Zhenzhao and further discusses the essential causes for the ethical choices. Chapter Four probes into the theme of returning to ethics and the enlightenment for modern women, it also highlights the educational value of ethical literary criticism. The conclusion part summarizes what has been discussed in the above chapters, and expounds the theoretical and practical significance of the study. The study of Munro’s short stories from the perspective of ethical literary criticism can make contributions to the further understanding of her creating concepts and also provide valuable spiritual guidance for constructing a harmonious society.