Hidden in Plain Vie Narrative and Creative Potentials in }}}War and Peace}}} [Paperback]

For decades, the formal peculiarities ofWar and Peacedisturbed Russian and Western critics, who attributed both the anomalous structure and the literary power of the book to Tolstoy's primitive, unruly genius. Using that critical history as a starting point, this volume recaptures the overwhelming sense of strangeness felt by the work's first readers and thereby illuminates Tolstoy's theoretical and narratological concerns.The author demonstrates that the formal peculiarities ofWar and Peacewere deliberate, designed to elude what Tolstoy regarded as the falsifying constraints ofallnarratives, both novelistic and historical. Developing and challenging the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, Morson explores Tolstoy's account of the work's composition in light of various myths of the creative process. He proposes a theory of creation by potential that incorporates Tolstoy's main concerns: the openness of each historical moment; the role of chance in history and within narrative patterns; and the efficacy of ordinary events, hidden in plain view, in shaping history and individual psychology. In his reading of Tolstoy, he demonstrates how we read literary works within the penumbral text of associated theories of creativity.Gary Saul Morson is Professor of Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University, and the author ofThe Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky's 'Diary of a Writer' and the Traditions of Literary Utopia, and the editor ofLiterature and History: Theoretical Problems and Russian Case Studies.For decades, the formal peculiarities ofWar and Peacedisturbed Russian and Western critics, who attributed both the anomalous structure and the literary power of the book to Tolstoy's primitive, unruly genius. Using that critical history as a starting point, this volume recaptures the overwhelming sense of strangeness felt by the work's first readers and thereby illuminates Tolstoy's theoretical and narrl#&