Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time - Hardcover

Morson, Gary Saul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300058829 ISBN 13: 9780300058826

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Drawing on works by the Russian writers Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, by other writers as diverse as Sophocles, Cervantes, and George Eliot, by thinkers as varied as William James, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stephen Jay Gould, and from philosophy, the Bible, television, and much more, Gary Saul Morson examines the relation of time to narrative form and to an ethical dimension of the literary experience.
Morson asserts that the way we think about the world and narrate events is often in contradiction to the truly eventful and open nature of daily life. Literature, history, and the sciences frequently present experience as if contingency, chance, and the possibility of diverse futures were all illusory. As a result, people draw conclusions or accept ideologies without sufficiently examining their consequences or alternatives. However, says Morson, there is another way to read and construct texts. He explains that most narratives are developed through foreshadowing and "backshadowing" (foreshadowing ascribed after the fact), which tend to reduce the multiplicity of possibilities in each moment. But other literary works try to convey temporal openness through a device he calls "sideshadowing." Sideshadowing suggests that to understand an event is to grasp what else might have happened.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Saul Morson is Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0300058829
• ISBN 13: 9780300058826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 348