British Tradition and the Quest for Canadian Identity in Alice Munro's Narratives.

Abstract

This article demonstrates how Alice Munro uses Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Hateship, Friendship, Courting, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) to highlight the importance of “Britishness” among the people of Anglo-Saxon origin in Canada and how it influences the other ethnic groups in this country in the quest for a real Canadian identity. Life in towns, British history and traditions, the English language, and its literature are the main factors which export the concept of Canada throughout the world as an unseparable part of the British Empire.