Mothers and Other Clowns: Stories of Alice Munro - Tapa dura

This study of the work of Alice Munro focuses on her obsession with mothering, relating it to the hallucinatory quality of her magic realism. A bizarre collection of clowning mothers parade across the pages of Munro's fiction, playing practical jokes, performing stunts, and dressing in thrift shop disguises that recycle vintage literary images. Paying close attention to their mimicries, Magdalene Redekop studies this parade with the aim of gaining increased understanding of Munro's evolving comic vision. As the outlines of her aesthetic are delineated, it becomes clear that it involves a new way of looking at autobiography and a new way of looking at narrative sequence. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics of literature, particularly Canadian literature and women's studies.