Ethics and Affects in the Fiction of Alice Munro

Ethics and Affects in the Fiction of Alice Munro explores the representation of embodied ethics and affects in Alice Munro's writing, highlighting how her stories intersect with various theoretical trends such as affect studies, ethical criticism, age studies, disability studies, animal studies, and posthumanism. The collection offers an edgier and messier Munro who challenges normative identity and humanist conventions, destabilizing gender and sexual politics, ethical responsibilities, and affective economies.

Format: Hardback
Length: 250 pages
Publication date: 13 September 2018
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG

Ethics and Affects in Alice Munro's Fiction delves into the portrayal of embodied ethics and affects in the author's writing. The collection showcases how Munro's short stories seamlessly intersect with significant theoretical trends in literary studies, including affect studies, ethical criticism, age studies, disability studies, animal studies, and posthumanism. These essays present us with an alternative portrayal of Alice Munro, one that challenges the conventional image of the kindly Canadian icon reinforcing small-town verities celebrated and perpetuated through acts of national pedagogy with her Nobel Prize win. Instead, they contemplate an edgier, messier Munro whose fictions delve into affective and ethical perplexities that disturb rather than provide comfort.

In Munro's fiction, unruly embodiments and affects disrupt the normative identity and humanist conventions based on reason and rationality, destabilizing prevailing gender and sexual politics, ethical responsibilities, and affective economies. As these essays elucidate, Munro's fiction serves as a reminder of the consequences of everyday affects and the extraordinary ordinariness of the ethical encounters we engage in repeatedly.

Through her exploration of embodied ethics and affects, Munro's fiction invites us to reevaluate our understanding of morality, ethics, and the human experience. It challenges us to consider the complexities of our relationships with others and ourselves, and to explore the ways in which our emotions, desires, and experiences shape our lives and societies. By doing so, Munro's fiction offers us a rich and nuanced perspective on the world, one that encourages us to think critically and engage with the ethical and affective dimensions of our lives in new and meaningful ways.

Weight: 452g
Dimension: 156 x 219 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783319906430
Edition number: 1st ed. 2018