Carol Shields and the Extra-ordinary

by Dvorak, Marta; Jones, Manina

• ISBN13: 9780773532205
• ISBN10: 077353220X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ Pr

Summary

Claiming the "ordinary" and "extra-ordinary" as critical categories, contributors to this volume explore the philosophical and literary import of Carol Shields's writing, its complex play with genre and narrative technique, its re-valuing of domesticity and gendered perspective, and the social critique implicit in its gentle satirical impulses. Carol Shields and the Extra-Ordinary begins with a previously unpublished article by Shields. In the essays that follow, international scholars employ a variety of theories and methodologies in their analyses of her work, including narrative theory, cultural criticism, feminist analysis, psychoanalytic approaches, tropological explication, theories of authorship, and ficto-criticism to demonstrate how Shields's writing represents a genuine revision of literary realism in which the ordinary is subject to contemplation and not just celebration.Contributors include Carol Shields, Marta Dvorák (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Catherine Hobbs (Library and Archives Canada), Coral Ann Howells (Reading), Lorna Irvine (George Mason), Manina Jones (Western Ontario), Ellen Levy (Toulouse-Le Mirail), Christine Lorre (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Patricia-Léa Paillot (IUFM d'Aquitaine), Taïna Tuhkunen (Nantes), Aritha van Herk (Calgary), Héliane Ventura (Orléans), Christl Verduyn (Mount Allison), and Lorraine York (McMaster).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
Out of the Ordinary: Introduction	p. 3
A View from the Edge of the Edge	p. 17
Essaying/Assaying Genre: Biography, Archive, Short Story, Novel
Voice and Re-vision: The Carol Shields Archival Fonds	p. 33
(Es)Saying It Her Way: Carol Shields as Essayist	p. 59
"Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls": Into the (Extra)ordinary World of Girls and Women	p. 80
Carol Shields's The Republic of Love, or How to Ravish a Genre	p. 97
Larry's A/Mazing Spaces	p. 115
Margins of Otherness: Reflection, Subjectivity, Embodiment
A Knowable Country: Embodied Omniscience in Carol Shields's The Republic of Love and Larry's Party	p. 139
Pioneering Interlaced Spaces: Shifting Perspectives and Self-Representation in Larry's Party	p. 157
Scenes from a (Boston) Marriage: The Prosaics of Collaboration and Correspondence in A Celibate Season	p. 172
"Artefact Out of Absence": Reflection and Convergence in the Fiction of Carol Shields	p. 191
Eros in the Eye of the Mirror: The Rewriting of Myths in Carol Shields's "Mirrors"	p. 205
Extra-Ordinary Performances: Production and Reception
Disappearance and "the Vision Multiplied": Writing as Performance	p. 223
Large Ceremonies: The Literary Celebrity of Carol Shields	p. 238
Mischiefs, Misfits, and Miracles	p. 256
Index	p. 271
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