Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity

by Katherine Bowers (Editor), Kate Holland (Editor)

Marking the bicentenary of Dostoevsky’s birth, Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity takes the writer’s art – specifically the tension between experience and formal representation – as its central theme. While many critical approaches to Dostoevsky’s works are concerned with spiritual and philosophical dilemmas, this volume focuses instead on questions of design and narrative to explore Dostoevsky and the novel from a multitude of perspectives. Contributors situate Dostoevsky’s formal choices of narrative, plot, genre, characterization, and the novel itself within modernity and consider how the experience of modernity led to Dostoevsky’s particular engagement with form. Conceived as a forum for younger scholars working in new directions in Dostoevsky scholarship, this volume asks how narrative and genre shape Dostoevsky’s works, as well as how they influence the way modernity is represented. Of interest not only to readers and scholars of Russian literature but also to those curious about the genre of the novel more broadly, Dostoevsky at 200 is pathbreaking in its approach to the question of Dostoevsky’s contribution to the novel as a form.

Genres: Russia, Literature

264 pages, Hardcover

Published July 20, 2021

About the author

Katherine Bowers is an Associate Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is a specialist in 19th-century Russian literature.

Reviews

[Chloe Westphal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and thought provoking! I particularly enjoyed Katherine Bowers’s exploration of the influences of the gothic genre on The Idiot, and how Dostoevsky infuses it, not only with familiar gothic imagery, but with “gothic narrative force.” I also very much enjoyed “The Greasy-Haired Pawnbroker and the Capitalist Raskrasavitsa: Dostoevsky’s Businesswomen” by Vadim Shneyeder, and Greta Matzner-Gore’s “The Improbable Poetics of Crime and Punishment.” Really though, I took much away from every chapter, and I so appreciate that it has been made publicly available.

[Vanjr]

A hard book to rate, so I won't. Written by scholars for scholars. I am very, very well read in Dostoevsky, but not nearly at this level-I did learn some things, but unless you are in Slavic studies or academics full time it will be a struggle to read. Not an introduction to Dostoevsky! (Have I scared you away yet?). Academics approach to Dostoevsky and ideas about novels.