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Articles

Volume 08, Number 1 (1983)

"The Other Side of Dailiness": The Paradox of Photography in Alice Munro's Fiction

  • Lorraine M. York
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1983-01-01

Abstract

The major concept that characterizes the fiction of Alice Munro is that of paradox, a concept which also characterizes the vision of photographic realists. Munro's fiction centres on the paradox of the familiar and the exotic as well as on that of movement and stasis; that is, Munro defamiliarizes everyday objects, and she also creates a meeting place where motion and stillness can unite -- just as in a photograph. Thus, by fusing these disparate elements into a synthesis which is paradox, Munro brings her intuition to the surface, and she keeps it there, bonding into a single entity photographer, camera, time, and the objective world.