Materiality in Alice Munro’s short fiction

This Special Issue of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice , edited by Corinne Bigot (University of Toulouse) and Christine Lorre (University of Caen), is devoted to ‘Alice Munro and Materiality’. Approaching Munro’s work through the prism of materiality is a way to revisit the questions of the apparent ‘realism’ of her writing, which leads to re-examining the relation between materiality and the immaterial for a writer, or any artist. Material matters are a powerful entry point into a woman’s world-view, the life of the imagination, the human psyche – including its most sombre corners – which altogether constitute Munro’s material as a writer. To illustrate ways to investigate this research direction, which is taken up by the articles of the issue, this editorial sketches out how materiality generates images that are related alternately to the body, domestic violence, memories and emotions, and the manyfold significance of houses.