Alice Munro and the Art of Time

In Alice Munro and the Art of Time, Laura K. Davis demonstrates how one of the worlds greatest writers of short stories challenged and reconfigured traditional assumptions about time. In chapters that analyze selected stories and collections from across Munros career, Davis examines the formal and conceptual function of temporality in Munros oeuvre, considering the relationship between the past and the present, material experiences of being, story structure, memory, and memoir. While place has been considered extensively by scholars of the Nobel-Prize-winning authors work, time has not been given equal attention, until now. Clear and compelling interpretations of Munros stories offer insights into her writing process, her representations of character and setting, and the complexities of her narrative techniqueswhich often evade linearity and chronology, emphasizing, instead, revision, repetition, and the body. By highlighting the connections between time and various tropes in Munros work, including identity, ephemerality, and environmental change, this study provides new, exciting avenues for engaging with Munros work. As Davis reveals, Munros intricate narrative structures resist dominant conceptions of time and instead epitomize a complex, diverse understanding of life, often centering womens knowledge while simultaneously foregrounding the possibilities and necessity of performativity, inclusion, and change.