Shaped by Stories

The Ethical Power of Narratives

Marshall Gregory

In his latest book, Marshall Gregory begins with the premise that our lives are saturated with stories, ranging from magazines, books, films, television, and blogs to the words spoken by politicians, pastors, and teachers. He then explores the ethical implications of this universal human obsession with narratives. Through careful readings of Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Grave” and Thurber’s “The Catbird Seat,” as well as David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights, and other works, Gregory asks (and answers) the question: How do the stories we absorb in our daily lives influence the kinds of persons we turn out to be?

MARSHALL W. GREGORY is Ice Professor of English, Liberal Education, and Pedagogy at Butler University. He is co-author with Wayne Booth of The Harper and Row Rhetoric: Writing as Thinking, Thinking as Writing and The Harper and Row Reader: Liberal Education through Reading and Writing; and co-author with Ellie Chambers of Teaching and Learning English Literature.

” _Shaped by Stories_ weaves its own compelling story about the pervasive ethical effects of reading narrative, with Marshall Gregory serving as a highly engaging and ethically admirable narrator—a very model of good company.” — James Phelan, Distinguished University Professor of English, Ohio State University

“From a lifetime of reflecting on the ethics of fiction, Marshall Gregory has given us an elegant analysis of the power of stories to instruct and delight. No one interested in storytelling will want to be without this incisive guide to both the myriad ways that stories shape our lives and the strategies writers use to affect our responses to their fictions. Both the theoretical and practical halves of Shaped by Stories have clarity and eloquence that yield their own instruction and delight.” —Robert D. Denham, Fishwick Professor of English, Roanoke College

“Marshall Gregory’s Shaped by Stories brings ethical criticism to the level of felt experience. Witty and passionate, full of personal reflections and sharp examples, this book will help anyone who has been drawn to the mysterious power of stories to think more carefully about the connections between narrative art and human ethos. Gregory reminds us that the urgency of our need for stories is tied permanently to the requirements of being human, the need to exercise judgment, belief, and empathy in the process of becoming who we are.” — Annette Federico, James Madison University

“Shaped by Stories is a well-written, interesting, and humane book on the value of narratives in ethics and in our lives. The volume enters into conversation with a growing, and popular, body of literature, which considers the role of stories, narrative, and literature for ethics and for moral education more generally. Marshall Gregory combines well-grounded observations about literature and about human life, including his own life, in this illuminating interdisciplinary contribution to the ethics of literature.” — Pamela Hall, Emory University