Abstract

It has often been observed that Alice Munro is a master of narrative complexity. "The love of a good woman", in particular, is a story that challenges conventional notions of structure in short fiction through digression or deferral, discontinuity, layering, and so on. Ross (2002) rightly observes that conventional theories of reading fail to get at the process involved in achieving successful "apprenticeship" with Munro's short fiction. This paper explores the intricacies of Munro's creative craft as exemplified in "The love of a good woman" and proposes an approach to facilitating students' engagement with complex narratives. Through creative writing in a computer-based "wiki" environment, it is argued, we encourage students to undertake the project of "layering" narrative and of establishing and interrogating complex narrative relations. This creative exercise, in turn, may facilitate their understanding of short fiction such as Munro's. (Contains 2 figures and 2 footnotes.)

Citation

Dobson, T.M. (2006). The Love of a Good Narrative: Textuality and Digitality. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 5(2), 56-68. Retrieved May 30, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/71108/.

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Keywords

• College Instruction
• computer literacy
• Computer Uses in Education
• Creative Writing
• Fiction
• Literary Genres
• Reader Response
• Story Grammar
• Story Telling