Carol Shields and the Extra-Ordinary

Claiming the ordinary and extra-ordinary as critical categories, contributors to this volume explore the philosophical and literary import of Carol Shields's writing, its complex play with genre and narrative technique, its re-valuing of domesticity and gendered perspective, and the social critique implicit in its gentle satirical impulses. Carol Shields and the Extra-Ordinary begins with a previously unpublished article by Shields. In the essays that follow, international scholars employ a variety of theories and methodologies in their analyses of her work, including narrative theory, cultural criticism, feminist analysis, psychoanalytic approaches, tropological explication, theories of authorship, and ficto-criticism to demonstrate how Shields's writing represents a genuine revision of literary realism in which the ordinary is subject to contemplation and not just celebration.