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Writing (fictional) lives: the relationship between biography and fiction in the work of Carol Shields

This thesis examines the intersections between biography and fiction in three novels and one biography by Carol Shields: Small Ceremonies, Swann, The Stone Diaries, and Jane Austen. By writing about biography and biographers in each novel, Carol Shields foregrounds the subject of biography and emphasizes its reliance on imagination and creative interpretation. At the same time, she stresses the deficiencies in the factual records of Jane Austen's life in her biography. Although biography is considered to be the more factual of the two genres, Shields establishes that only fiction has the power to portray people's inner lives, and that certain truths are therefore accessible only through fiction. Shields is especially interested in using fiction to recover the life stories of women, which have often been lost from historical record. / English

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/769
Date11 1900
CreatorsStafford, Amy
ContributorsStovel, Nora (English and Film Studies), Demers, Patricia (English and Film Studies), Penrod, Lynn (Modern Languages and Cultural Studies)
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format484475 bytes, application/pdf

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