Homecoming, You and Genre in “Mlle. Dias de Corta”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/an.55.1-2.89-101Keywords:
Mavis Gallant, genre, short story, you-narrativeAbstract
This paper focuses on style and aesthetic risk in a single Mavis Gallant story, “Mlle. Dias de Corta.” It considers the narrative trajectory in this story that is in letter form but is a letter that can never be received because the intended recipient’s whereabouts are unknown. In examining Gallant’s story, I consider the vast emotional terrain the narrator traverses, while also looking at generic considerations, you-narrative and the foundations on which the narrator’s apparently sudden change in character are based.
Downloads
References
Bell, Alice, and Astrid Ensslin. “‘I Know What It Was. You Know What It Was’: Second-person Narration in Hypertext Fiction.” Narrative, vol. 19, no. 3, 2011, pp. 311–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41289307. Accessed 20 Jun. 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2011.0020
Dobozy, Tamas. “Dead Letters,” Last Notes and Other Stories, Arcade, 2006. Arcade. Kindle Edition, pp. 131-142.
Dvořák, Marta. Mavis Gallant: The Eye and the Ear. University of Toronto Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487531959
Gadpaille, Michelle. The Canadian Short Story. Oxford University Press, 1988.
Gallant, Mavis. “The Events in May: A Paris Notebook 1.” The New Yorker, 14 September 1968, pp. 58-124.
____. Paris Notebooks: Essays and Reviews. Macmillan, 1986.
____. “Mlle Dias de Corta,” Across the Bridge, McClelland & Stewart, 1993, pp. 131-142.
____. Interview by Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky, October 6, 1993, https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/mavis-gallant-1922-2014/. Accessed 20 June 22.
____. “Izgubljene Oče.” Zgodbe iz Kanade. Selected, edited and translated by Maja Kraigher. Sodobnost, 2006, pp. 169–177.
Hills, Rust. Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. Kindle Edition.
Hope, Jonathan and Laura Wright. Stylistics: A Practical Coursebook. Routledge, 1996.
Katz, Ariel. “Foreignness and Familiarity in Mavis Gallant’s ‘Mlle. Dias de Corta.’” Blog.pshares.org. https://blog.pshares.org/foreignness-and-familiarity-in-mavis-gallants-mlle-dias-de-corta/. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Leech, Geoffry N. and Michael H. Short. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd edition, Pearson: 2007.
Merlin, Bella. Acting: The Basics. Taylor and Francis, 2010. Kindle Edition DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203854860
Mittelmark, Howard and Sandra Newman. How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. HarperCollins, 2008. Kindle Edition.
Myka, Lenore. “Stories We Love: ‘Mlle. Dias de Corta,’ by Mavis Gallant.” October 18, 2015. https://fictionwritersreview.com/tag/mlle-dias-de-corta/. Accessed June 27, 2022.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Penguin, 2006.
O’Donoghue, Mary. “Best Story of 1992: ‘Mlle. Dias de Corta.’” Granta. https://granta.com/best-story-of-1992-mlle-dias-de-corta/. Accessed June 27, 2022.
Ondaatje, Michael. Introduction. Paris Stories, by Mavis Gallant, McClelland & Stewart, 2002, pp. 7-12.
Richardson, Bill. “Grief, Memory, Three O’clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, June 21.” Grief, Memory, Three O’Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, June 21, Oh, MG: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diaries, 21 June 2022, https://billrichardson.substack.com/p/grief-memory-three-oclock-in-the-61b. Accessed 23 June 2022.
Phelan, James. “‘Self-Help’ for Narratee and Narrative Audience: How ‘I’ – and ‘You’? – Read ‘How.’” Style, vol. 28, no. 3, 1994, pp. 350–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42946256. Accessed 20 June 2022.
Prose, Francine. Reading Like a Writer. Union Books, 2006.
____. “‘Mlle Dias de Corta’ by Mavis Gallant.” New Ohio Review. June 2022. https://newohioreview.org/2009/09/27/mlle-dias-de-corta-by-mavis-gallant/. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Wyatt, Kyle. “Imaginary Futures.” Literary Review of Canada, April 2022, p. 3. Available at: https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2022/04/imaginary-futures/
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Jason Blake
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in journal Acta Neophilologica by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
