Perils and pleasures : a collection of short fiction, and accompanying commentary.

This creative-critical thesis has two parts. The first part aims to collate original short fiction by the candidate. The accompanying second part is a contextualising essay, which aims to provide a reflective commentary on the Gothic elements in the candidate’s work. It begins with studying Canadian short story writer Alice Munro’s work as an example of how the Gothic can be incorporated or introduced in Realist Short Fiction. Since most of Munro’s early work has already been read as Gothic Realism by various other scholars, this thesis focuses on stories from her later volumes such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Runaway, View from Castle Rock and Dear Life which have not yet been exhaustively studied. Thus, by devoting attention to her later work the candidate hopes to be filling in a notable lacuna or gap. I have chosen to examine a total of ten stories from the later volumes, and to analyse how despite their focus on the quotidian, and their verisimilitude, they invoke the mysterious and the otherworldly dimension which has traditionally been the domain of Gothic texts. Despite the fact that Alice Munro writes primarily realist stories, those which privilege the character’s interior lives, experiences and personal relationships; both her themes, and narrative devices (dreams, diary entries, information uncovered through newspaper accounts, and letters) reinforce her intent to go beyond simple verisimilitude. The ten stories, which I have selected to analyse, are grouped according to theme. There are those dealing with violence (‘Queenie’, ‘Runaway’, and ‘Haven’), those dealing with expressive visuality akin to Gothic texts (‘Winter Wind’, ‘Nettles’, and ‘The Ticket’), and those dealing with the grotesque (‘Cortes Island’, ‘The Office’, and ‘Some Women.’) A short reflective commentary of my own work in each chapter, and how I have incorporated such themes and conventions in my own short fiction will complete the critical section