RETROSPECTIVE PLOT AND COMPOSITIONAL UNITY IN LEO TOLSTOY’S WAR AND PEACE

Abstract

This article examines the retrospective plot structure and compositional unity of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, exploring how the novel’s temporal dynamics and narrative architecture serve its philosophical and moral vision. Tolstoy’s use of retrospection is not merely a structural device, but a means of integrating personal experience, historical reflection, and moral introspection into a single artistic organism. The study argues that Tolstoy’s composition achieves a unique synthesis of historical epic and psychological realism, where the past continually informs the present, creating a circular sense of time that embodies his view of history as a living moral process.