Abstract:

As the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature，Canadian writer Alice Munro is called the "master of the contemporary short story." The Progress of Love is a short story collection published in 1986. The first piece which bears the same title as that of the collection is set in a village and mainly about some normal lives of the normal women. It uses the space-time conversion to describe death, marriage, divorce, love and hate which are closely related to these women. This paper will interpret “The Progress of Love” through discussing and analyzing these women of three generations from several aspects, such as social background, religious background, cultural background, and narrative structure etc. The paper will then analyze Alice Munro’s multiple themes and personal writing techniques of her short fiction, exploring Alice Munro's writing style and personal thoughts she wants to express through the story.

Keywords: Alice Munro; “The Progress of Love”; normal lives; feminism; narrative structure

摘  要：
加拿大作家艾丽丝•门罗获得2013年诺贝尔文学奖，颁奖词将称她为“当代短篇小说大师”。《爱的进程》是一部于1986年面世的短篇小说集。书中的首篇标题小说“爱的进程”以城郊小镇为背景，以平凡女子的平凡生活为主题，运用了时空转换的手法，描写了这些女人们身上发生的死亡、结婚、离异以及家庭中的爱恨情仇等等。本论文透过小说中的三代不同的女子从社会背景，宗教背景，文化背景，叙事结构等角度对“爱的进程”这篇小说进行解读，分析艾丽丝•门罗短篇小说的多重主题和个人写作手法，以期探讨艾丽丝•门罗的小说写作的风格及其所想要表达的个人思想等。

关键词：艾丽丝•门罗；“爱的进程”；平凡生活；女性主义；叙事结构

1 Introduction
1.1The significance of the study
As the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature，Canadians female writer Alice Munro was called the "master of the contemporary short story." Munro is one of the most famous Canadian female writers in contemporary literary world. She began writing stories when she was a girl. She has published one novel and hundreds of short stories which are mostly included in thirteen short story collections.
In 1968, her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published, which was popular with both readers and critics. In that year, she achieved the highest literary award of Canada--the Governor General Award for literature. Since then, she began to establish her status in the literary world of Canada, and gradually became famous in the world literature. During the later forty years of her writing career, she has created many excellent writings, not only has she won many awards in Canada, but also she has become popular in the international community. In the 1980s, Munro's short stories were widely included in many different published collections of Canada, Britain, the United States and other countries and gradually attracted the attention of the western critics. Some related researches heated up quickly. Except in the English-speaking countries, many people in other parts of the world also produce lots of academic papers and review articles about her short stories. Although Munro has already become hot in the world literature, her writings are mainly short stories. Chinese scholars pay very little attention to these short stories and do very scarce relevant translation studies and academic researches.