| Summary: | This thesis is about voice in short fiction. In
particular, it is about the multiple voices at work in a
series of contemporary Canadian short stories. Little
attention has been paid to voice in Canadian fiction; the
purpose of this study is to show that voice is important by
examining the ways in which voices come into play in these
texts. This dissertation will illustrate some of the ways in
which voices may be listened to; it will provide a
demonstration of the kinds of reading that may be done when
voice is situated at the core of the interaction between
reader and text.
Because the subject of this dissertation is narrative
voice, the first chapter is devoted to a consideration of
what the narrator is: what the term implies, how narrators
have been distinguished from authors, implied authors and
characters, and where difficulties arise in making such
distinctions. Each of the remaining chapters focusses on
the short fiction of an individual author. Chapter Two
highlights elements of repetition and surprise in Leon
Rooke's story "Shut Up." Chapter Three addresses the
interplay of voices in Terry Griggs' "Unfinished." The
fourth chapter analyzes two short stories by Douglas Glover,
"Red" and "Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Saskatoon"; these
are both first-person narrations and the analysis reveals
how the apparently singular "I" of each story plays host to
a variety of competing voices and identities. The principal
subject of Chapter Five is polyphony in Mavis Gallant's
story "The Pegnitz Junction"; the discussion focusses on the
complex interweaving of character-voices, and the role of
the omniscient narrator.
This dissertation comprises a series of analyses of
Canadian short fiction, analyses which illustrate the
techniques involved in identifying fictional voices. It
argues that short story criticism in Canada has, for the
most part, failed to address the issue of voice, and that
voice-centred reading strategies make a significant
contribution to the critical repertoire of readers of
fiction.
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