| The short story has acquired a privileged status in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Critics such as Frank O'Connor, Clare Hanson, W. H. New, and Lydia Wevers, argue that there is a congruence between the short story genre and the cultures such as these in which the short story flourishes. These critics suggest that authors writing from a particular cultural position, one that includes the history of settlement, are especially attracted to the short story because the capacities of the form offer an appropriate way of conceptualizing their thematic interests.; This thesis examines the correspondence between the short story genre and the kinds of societies, people, and themes the stories reveal in the work of six settler society writers: Australian authors Peter Carey and David Malouf, New Zealand authors Katherine Mansfield and Owen Marshall, and Canadian authors Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant The introductory chapter establishes a theoretical context for the connections to be made between the structures and devices of the short story form and the postcolonial issues explored by individual authors. Each subsequent chapter examines select stories by a single author. Close readings of the chosen stories explore how the authors convey meaning through the short story, and demonstrate the compatibility between the genre's form and these authors' perspectives.; The thesis also pursues the unifying themes that exist across the chapters and that link the authors' work. Carey, Malouf, Mansfield, Marshall, Munro, and Gallant all explore the influence the settler past has upon the present; in this context, they examine questions of identity, the defining traits of culture, and the significance of place. In taking up these concerns, they cultivate the resources of the short story in similar ways, though Carey and Gallant are distinctive in their use of allegory and irony respectively. All six authors maximize the potential of the genre to generate ambiguity, uncertainty, openness, irresolution, and complexity. |
