Prosaics and Other Provocations

Develops the concept of ""prosaics"", which stresses the importance of ordinary events and the novel's unique ability to portray them. Arguing that time is open and contingency real, Morson develops a ""prosaics of process"" showing how some masterpieces have found an alternative to structure.

Gary Saul Morson (PhD Yale University) is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. His study Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (1996) won a best book award from the American Comparative Literature Association. He is also the author of Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (co-authored with Caryl Emerson, 1990), Anna Karenina in Our Time: Seeing More Wisely (2007), and The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture (2011).