Toni Morrison’s novels — a formidable shelf of eleven by now, as the author settles in to her mid-eighties — have all been catholicons, correctives to the canon. That strong, sensuous diction — always hers even when it is also a character’s — is merely the outer wrapping for rage, for exhortation. In this way, her work resembles the Bible, if the prophetic cadence were cut with straight talk, skewed adage, and jive. Hers has been a Protestant calling, though Morrison converted to the Church of Rome at the age of twelve.

Morrison’s other, perhaps more influential, apprenticeships were to Tolstoy and Austen.…