Notes from Underground by F.M. Dostoevsky in XXth Century English Criticism

The article is devoted to the issue of the critical reception of F.M. Dostoevskys Notes from Underground in the XXth century. Some letters, as well as books on philosophy and literary criticism by such writers as D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Murry, C. Wilson and I. Murdoch are analysed. The reviews by the given authors correspond to two waves of interest in Dostoevsky - the first one took place at the turn of the XXth century followed by the second one in the middle of the century. The writers name the key characteristics of the Underground Man: vanity, egoism, self-division, desire for suffering and inability to act. Some critics of Dostoevskys Notes see the Underground Man as recurrent image and note his relevance to the ideas of existentialism, especially the one about inability to apprehend truth in a rational way.

Douglas LePan: Poet of the New and Old Worlds

C. Day Lewis said of The Wounded Prince (1948) that Douglas LePan was a poet “in whom the New and the Old World have met.” Like the other New World/Old World or Atlantic world poets, such as T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, LePan represents the individual in nature and the modern world. The other transatlantic poets had a United States-Britain axis, whereas LePan had a Canada- Britain connection. LePan and poets like him deserve study as part of a diversity of voices from smaller literatures, for the sound of beauty and not the noise of fame. During LePan’s life, others knew of his accomplishments, but, since his death, still others may have forgotten what Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood knew – that LePan’s poetry warranted close and considered attention. Before a close reading of some of his most lyrical poems, I provide a context, the critical reception of LePan as a poet, particularly in the years from 1948 to 1987, and some germane discussions of LePan’s poetry in subsequent years.

Quand Marie Darrieussecq parle de race : réception et posture de l’écrivain blanc

This article reflects upon the remarkable reception of Marie Darrieussecq’s novel Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes in the autumn of 2013. In the first instance, it questions the response of literary critics—surprisingly unanimous in spite of the novel’s treatment of interracial relations and colonial heritage—as well as the author’s posturing until she was awarded the prestigious Médicis prize. While French literary studies continue to be governed by ethnoracial criteria applied to minority authors (“francophone” writers, “beur” or “banlieue” literature, etc.), this article seeks to demonstrate that, during this period marked by extensively reported racist incidents, a certain image of the white writer emerged from the novel’s critical reception as well as Darrieussecq’s own public interventions.

Creativity

The study of creativity is about how people generate novel ideas and products, as opposed to reproducing or mimicking things that already exist. In this chapter, the author characterizes the study of creativity as the three Ms of mechanism, modulator, and meme. The mechanisms of creativity include the modification of existing products and the blending of two or more products to create stylistic fusions. Modulators of creativity include both individual-level factors (e.g. personality) and social factors (e.g. political constraints). The notion of a ‘meme’ reflects the cultural evolutionary concept that creative products either flourish or die out as a result of the critical reception they receive. A central question for the psychology of creativity is whether creativity depends more on domain-specific or domain-general mechanisms, or some combination of the two.

F. M. Dostoyevsky in the Journal Zavety (1912–1914): Stating an issue

The article attempts to identify the key moments of F. Dostoevsky’s presence in the context of the literary and critical declarations of the journal Zavety, primarily, by its co-editors, V. Chernov, and especially by Ivanov-Razumnik. His attitude towards the writer as a “world genius”, “the apogee of ethical individualism”, expressed in a number of articles, should be considered programmatic for this journal. A. Dolinin’s critical reception and reviews in the bibliographic department are in line with this attitude.

"Transformations and transmutations. Notes on the critical reception of Romanticism in Bulgaria (mid1940s - early 1970s)"

The text focuses on the critical reception of Romanticism in Bulgaria (mid-40s – early 70s of the twentieth century). Histories of literature and literary studies are discussed, which are seen as a source for the mental and ideological attitudes of the time in which they were created. Two concepts are applied – transformation and transmutation, which are a tool for studying the course of ideological attitudes of the Bulgarian critical reception of European romanticism.