scholarly journals Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type—but which one?

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Kåre Johan Mjør

The article analyses a set of philosophical statements made by and attributed to Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, in order to answer the question as to what kind of philosophy Ivan may be said to express in the novel. My close reading reveals that there is a significant distinction between, on the one hand,  Ivan's most radical statements, that is his rational egoism and the idea that "everything is permitted," which are always given in reported speech, and on the other the “Ivan of direct speech,” a character characterized by far more moral sensibility (e.g. in the Pro et contra part). On the basis of these findings the article seeks to bring together two traditions in the reception of Dostoevsky—the philosophical and the narratological. By letting these approaches inform one another I suggest ways in which the structural organization of the text is itself a bearer of philosophical meaning. Moreover, the article takes seriously Bakhtin's claim that Dostoevsky's heroes are not merely stable representations of ideas, but engage with them through dialogue and encounters with others, as exemplified by Ivan Karamazov himself as well as by other characters' responses to his articulations. 

SlavVaria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
ДИАНА КОМЯТИ

“Two novels of one biography”: “Three years” by A.P. Chekhov and “The Brothers Karamazov” by F.M. Dostoevsky. In contemporary Chekhov studies the significance of Dostoevsky’s creative heritage in Chekhov’ artistic world is increasingly comprehended. They attempt to reveal and interpret intertextual connections with Dostoevsky’s novels, embedded in the subtext of Chekhov’s works. On the one hand, common themes and problems that bring writers closer together are revealed, on the other hand, Chekhov’s polemical rethinking of Dostoevsky’s legacy is noted. Connected with this tendency the article deals with comparative analysis of Chekhov’s story “Three Years” and Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. In this work we try to identify and interpretate the allusions and parallels hidden in Chekhov’s story.


Poetics Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-698
Author(s):  
Thomas Garcin

In her seminal work, Authoritarian Fictions: Ideological Novels as a Literary Genre, Susan Rubin Suleiman emphasizes the co-optational dimension of romans à thèse, which seem addressed to readers who are already converted to the ideological perspective of these works. Political novels therefore tend to divide readers into two categories: proponents on the one hand, denigrators on the other. Based on a close reading of Runaway Horses (1969), Mishima Yukio’s most overtly ideological fictional work, this article is meant to enrich Suleiman’s model by showing that the most elaborate authoritarian fictional works use specific rhetorical tactics to soften or compensate for the excess of their message and to appeal to nonsympathizers. Focusing on chapters 9 and 10 of Runaway Horses, where the novel shifts from a classical and realist tone (chapters 1 to 8) to an ideological and authoritarian one (chapters 9 to 40), the article analyzes three of these rhetorical tactics: (1) the lightning rod, which consists of attracting criticisms about one specific and clearly delineated locus of the text, fulfilling an apotropaic function and serving as a foil for the rest; (2) prolepsis, which anticipates the reader’s likely negative comments and thus becomes in tune with his perspective; and (3) the tactic of enlarging the audience by which the narrator reincorporates a sectarian ideology into a larger and more universal ensemble. The conclusion questions the place of the reader and investigates the reading strategies that he or she may adopt in order to respond to this manipulation.


2020 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Goral

The aim of the article is to analyse the elements of folk poetics in the novel Pleasant things. Utopia by T. Bołdak-Janowska. The category of folklore is understood in a rather narrow way, and at the same time it is most often used in critical and literary works as meaning a set of cultural features (customs and rituals, beliefs and rituals, symbols, beliefs and stereotypes) whose carrier is the rural folk. The analysis covers such elements of the work as place, plot, heroes, folk system of values, folk rituals, customs, and symbols. The description is conducted based on the analysis of source material as well as selected works in the field of literary text analysis and ethnolinguistics. The analysis shows that folk poetics was creatively associated with the elements of fairy tales and fantasy in the studied work, and its role consists of – on the one hand – presenting the folk world represented and – on the other – presenting a message about the meaning of human existence.


PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-454

Sons and Lovers (1913) is one of D.H. Lawrence’s most prominent novels in terms of psychological complexities characteristic of most, if not all, of his other novels. Many studies have been conducted on the Oedipus complex theory and psychological relationship between men and women in Lawrence’s novels reflecting the early twentieth century norms of life. This paper reexamines Sons and Lovers from the perspective of rivalry based on Alfred Adler’s psychological studies. The discussion tackles the sibling rivalry between the members of the Morels and extends to reexamining the rivalry between other characters. This concept is discussed in terms of two levels of relationships. First, between Paul and William as brothers on the one hand, and Paul and father and mother, on the other. Second, the rivalry triangle of Louisa, Miriam and Mrs. Morel. The qualitative pattern of the paper focuses on the textual analysis of the novel to show that Sons and Lovers can be approached through the concept of rivalry and sibling Rivalry. Keywords: Attachment theory, Competition, Concept of Rivalry, Favoritism, Sibling rivalry.


Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219
Author(s):  
Liz Shek-Noble

Alexis Wright's second novel, Carpentaria, received critical acclaim upon its publication by Giramondo in 2006. As the recipient of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2007, Carpentaria cemented Wright's position as the country's foremost Indigenous novelist. This article places Carpentaria within contemporary discussions of “big, ambitious novels” by contemporary women novelists by examining the ways the novel simultaneously invites and resists its inclusion into an established canon of “great Australian novels” (GANs). While critics have been quick to celebrate the formal innovations of Carpentaria as what makes it worthy of GAN status, the novel nevertheless opposes the integrationist and homogenizing myths that accompany canonization. Therefore, the article finds that Wright's vision of a future Australia involves moments of antagonism and mutual understanding between white settler and Indigenous communities. This article uses the work of Homi Bhabha to argue that Carpentaria demonstrates the emergence of a third space wherein negotiation between these two cultures produces knowledge that is “new, neither the one nor the other.” In so doing, Wright shows the resilience of Indigenous knowledge even as it is subject to transformation upon contact with contradictory ideological and epistemological frameworks.


PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kerry Alistair Nitz

<p>Iris Hanika’s commercially and critically successful novel Treffen sich zwei makes use of several techniques in the characterisation of its protagonists. Many of its reviews focus on the author’s deliberate placement of links to a wider literary context. Their interest extends from questions of genre-mixing through to the identification of direct quotes from other authors’ works. The critical preoccupation with intertexts demonstrates their importance for the readers’ response to the novel. More specifically, certain reviews highlight the important role intertexts play in the characterisation of the protagonists. This study catalogues the intertexts, metaphors and parodies in Treffen sich zwei and, by means of quantitative analysis, identifies high-level patterns in the use of these techniques. In particular, patterns are identified between, on the one hand, the different narrative functions of the intertexts and, on the other hand, the different ways in which they are interwoven in the text. The data also shows that distinct patterns are associated with each of the two protagonists and that certain patterns change in the course of the novel in parallel with the changes in the relationship between them. This quantitative evidence is supported by a more detailed, qualitative approach, which examines how specific intertexts or metaphors are used for the purposes of characterisation. In addition, variations in voice are used to distinguish the two main protagonists in a manner consistent with the intertexts and metaphors. It is thanks to the combination of these techniques that the theme of meeting encapsulated in the title, Treffen sich zwei, is woven into the textual fabric of the novel.</p>


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