<p>The following study of Alice Munro's collections of short stories, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Moons of Jupiter, and The Progress of Love, closely examines the feminine perception of human relationships and traces Munro's theme of lithe pain of human contact. Chapter I explores the changing perception of life and relationships as seen through the eyes of the central character of Who Do You Think You Are? and discusses the paradoxical view of life articulated by Munro, a view which asks that the abuse which characters inflict upon one another be seen as both savage and splendid, as perversely necessary in any relationship between her characters. This idea of a necessary pain is discussed in Chapter II in light of Munro's more intense fascination with it in The Moons of Jupiter. Her vision of the humiliating necessity of inflicting and enduring pain does not, however, culminate in a clearly-defined resolution to the paradoxes of experience; indeed, The Moons of Jupiter suggests Munro's growing hesitancy to solve the puzzles of human experience. Chapter II also examines Munro's experimentation with narrative time shifts and discusses this new interest in technique as it pertains to her preoccupation with the disparity between illusion and reality in the lives of her characters. The shifting back and forth between past and present is a technique which Munro continues to employ in her next work, The Progress of Love, which I examine in Chapter III. This most recent work, like Who Do You Think You Are? and The Moons of Jupiter, looks closely at the delicate moments of exposure in experience and at the necessary painfulness of those moments, but with a difference. In The Progress of Love Munro seems to allow her characters moments of serenity and moments of self-knowledge; the feminine perception of experience has altered to the degree that her characters appear able to move beyond disillusionment through to a kind of survival of those moments of exposure which in the Moons of Jupiter appear to overwhelm and almost paralyze the characters. </p> / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

<p>The Hard Lesson of Life: A Study of /Re/construction of Life in School from a Religious Educational Perspective</p><p>The overriding aim of this dissertation is to examine the understanding of life that young people /re/construct, and in this sense learn, in the discursive practices of school, and to describe how such a /re/construction takes place.</p><p>The theoretical frame of the study is a critical theory perspective. Potentially problematic aspects and findings are therefore given priority over good examples. The three main concepts used were generated through the interaction of theory and empirical material. These conceptual tools are: ‘understanding of life’, ‘discursive practice’, and ‘language’. The first concept refers to the young learners’ collectively /re/constructed perceptions of how life works and of what gives life value and meaning. Discursive practice is the concept used for the context and the way in which learning takes shape. Language is an important resource in the shaping of the collective interpretation, negotiation and /re/construction of an understanding of life.</p><p>Two empirical studies are presented, a main study and a complementary one. The main study, which is regionally limited, is a group interview with 51 youths from five schools divided into ten groups. The second is a study of the most frequently used high school Religion textbook, Religion and Life, and the analysis draws on the results from the group interview study.</p><p>The institutional frames, the large-sized schools, and the tasks of school to educate pupils and to differentiate between them, are risk factors that may lead to stereotypical, instrumental, and competitive relationships in education. The group interview study indicates that there are grounds for concern since it shows that victimization works as a teaching tool in the /re/construction of a hegemonic discourse of understanding life. The empirically identified hegemonic discourse of understanding life is termed “Life as adjustment for the benefit of individual competition”. Victimization is shown to be both the cause and effect of this discourse. The hegemonic life discourse also lends contextual legitimacy to victimization. The study of the school textbook suggests that the subject Religion may reinforce such a hegemonic understanding of life if it fails to balance the book’s objective and descriptive accounts of abuse of power.</p>

The Hard Lesson of Life: A Study of /Re/construction of Life in School from a Religious Educational Perspective The overriding aim of this dissertation is to examine the understanding of life that young people /re/construct, and in this sense learn, in the discursive practices of school, and to describe how such a /re/construction takes place. The theoretical frame of the study is a critical theory perspective. Potentially problematic aspects and findings are therefore given priority over good examples. The three main concepts used were generated through the interaction of theory and empirical material. These conceptual tools are: ‘understanding of life’, ‘discursive practice’, and ‘language’. The first concept refers to the young learners’ collectively /re/constructed perceptions of how life works and of what gives life value and meaning. Discursive practice is the concept used for the context and the way in which learning takes shape. Language is an important resource in the shaping of the collective interpretation, negotiation and /re/construction of an understanding of life. Two empirical studies are presented, a main study and a complementary one. The main study, which is regionally limited, is a group interview with 51 youths from five schools divided into ten groups. The second is a study of the most frequently used high school Religion textbook, Religion and Life, and the analysis draws on the results from the group interview study. The institutional frames, the large-sized schools, and the tasks of school to educate pupils and to differentiate between them, are risk factors that may lead to stereotypical, instrumental, and competitive relationships in education. The group interview study indicates that there are grounds for concern since it shows that victimization works as a teaching tool in the /re/construction of a hegemonic discourse of understanding life. The empirically identified hegemonic discourse of understanding life is termed “Life as adjustment for the benefit of individual competition”. Victimization is shown to be both the cause and effect of this discourse. The hegemonic life discourse also lends contextual legitimacy to victimization. The study of the school textbook suggests that the subject Religion may reinforce such a hegemonic understanding of life if it fails to balance the book’s objective and descriptive accounts of abuse of power.

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