SOURCE: Eagleton, Mary. “Carol Shields and Pierre Bourdieu: Reading Swann.” Critique 44, no. 3 (spring 2003): 313-28.

In the following essay, Eagleton applies the theories of French poststructuralist Pierre Bourdieu to a discussion of Shields's Swann as a work of metafiction.

Carol Shields's Swann provides fertile ground for an exploration of issues relating to literary production, particularly women's literary production, and matters of sexual politics and the gendering of discourse figure prominently in the text. The novel has been read as a mystery; indeed, in various editions the full title appears as Swann: A Mystery or Swann: A Literary Mystery. It unravels the strange disappearance of not only all the volumes of poetry produced by the now dead Mary Swann but also everything connected with her literary production, the single clear photograph of her, and even the lectures and notes of two critics studying her poetry, Syd Buswell and Morton Jimroy...