Alienation,Power,Revival

Alice Munro,the first laureate of Nobel Prize for Literature in Canada,is the “master of the contemporary short stories” named by the Swedish Academy.She is well known for her profound concern for females' destiny and varied narration techniques.The Love of a Good Woman is her ninth collection that is set in the background of small towns and cities of Canada in 1940 s – 1980 s.Throughout the eight stories therein,Munro focalizes on the common life of ordinary people and pictures the existential dilemma as well as their diversified everyday practices.The theory of critique of everyday life is founded by Lefebvre during the philosophical turn of Marxism,in order to reveal people's life featured with complete alienation.This thesis makes a tentative exploration of Munro's implicated clue to the social problems in stories' realistic situation,where attentive meditation on the alienated relationship between man and the self,man and man as well as man and society is presented.Meanwhile,the author reveals the deep-structured power relation resulting in the pervasive alienation and explores Munro's expectation of reviving the artistic everyday life.Five chapters compose this thesis.Chapter One presents the overall introduction of this thesis including the information of Alice Munro and her writing features,Lefebvre's critique of everyday life,the analysis framework as well as the significance and structure of this thesis.Chapter Two,Chapter Three and Chapter Four make up the body part,where three questions are answered.Chapter Two mainly focuses on the analysis of the everyday phenomenon in characters' lives like the divided self,estranged interpersonal relationship and the isolated men by the pervasive alienation.Chapter Three emphasizes the three main power relations which lead to the characters' alienated life.Chapter Four summarizes the creative practice of the characters consisting of the festivals,moment of epiphany and the construction of the “total man”,all of which lay the foundation for the revival of the artistic everyday life.Chapter Five is the conclusion part,where a brief review of the major findings of this thesis is formalized.And the author concludes that Munro's particular writing style which combines social problems with artistic representation works together to strengthen her writing depth.