Of foxes stuffed simulacra, and fiction. Of foxes and fathers. "boys and girls", and "working for a living"

Alice Munro’s works have unleashed a large critical coverage which, surprisingly, tends to overlook or elude the animal question. The present study means to try and redress this oversight, and to present a panorama of the animal question, ranging from the first volume, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) to her last one, Dear Life (2012). The volume interrogates the functioning of Munro’s stories through her treatment of animals, whether the animal exists as a literal character accompanying man’s actions, or whether it appears in the text through metaphoric, mythic or emblematic allusions. By focusing on her entire oeuvre, it investigates the processes of variation animals and human beings are submitted to from her initial stories to her later developments. It simultaneously explores the stylistics, the thematics, and the ethics deployed in her narratives to recapitulate her art of the portrait as an art based on the animal presence. By highlighting the inextricable tissue of animality and humanity, her stories ultimately illustrate the force of an encounter through which all firm distinctions between species cease to obtain.