Lecture: Entering the World of Alice Munro

|Abstract|
In this class I look at how Alice Munro leads readers into fictional worlds. I consider her first sentences and reflect on style and variety in her stories, especially in light of the claim that there is a distinct style to her prose. An examination of her first sentences leads to at least one conclusion: for all their stylistic diversity, Munro’s lead-off sentences tend to establish a tension between what is realistic and tangible and what is seeming, what lies beneath or hidden.

|BIO|
Jason Blake is a professor in the University of Ljubljana’s English Department. He is the editor-in-chief of The Central European Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d’études canadiennes en Europe centrale as well as the author of Canadian Hockey Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2010) and the co-editor (with Andrew C. Holman) of The Same but Different: Hockey in Quebec (Queen’s-McGill University Press, 2017).