Ordinary children, extraordinary journeys: The role of imagination in the early life and selected fiction of Alice Munro

A child's education is a journey. Whether that journey is exciting or boring is largely determined, I believe, by the role imagination plays in the process--bit player or main character. I endeavour to discover how imagination is formed or shaped and to reveal how the role of imagination in a child's life is or can be a "learning tool." Aware of the close link between literature and imagination, I explore the early life and selected fiction of Alice Munro to discover the role imagination played in her life at home and at school.;Being aware that curricular change is not effected so much by literature as by theory, I examine Kieran Egan's important critical writings on the role of imagination in education. I then attempt to find correlations between the fictional (Munro) and the theoretical (Egan) to see if an alliance of the two can point to curricular possibilities.;Egan's theories serve as the foundation for the house I build out of Munro's fiction. I explore Munro's early life and inspect six of her short stories that depict young female characters who, like the youthful Munro, exhibit vivid imaginations. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).