UID:
almafu_9959329367902883
Format:
1 online resource :
,
15 halftones
ISBN:
9780691209371
Content:
This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank's widely acclaimed biography of Dostoevsky, covers the six most remarkably productive years in the novelist's entire career. It was in this short span of time that Dostoevsky produced three of his greatest novels--Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Devils--and two of his best novellas, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband. All these masterpieces were written in the midst of harrowing practical and economic circumstances, as Dostoevsky moved from place to place, frequently giving way to his passion for roulette. Having remarried and fled from Russia to escape importuning creditors and grasping dependents, he could not return for fear of being thrown into debtor's prison. He and his young bride, who twice made him a father, lived obscurely and penuriously in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, as he toiled away at his writing, their only source of income. All the while, he worried that his recurrent epileptic attacks were impairing his literary capacities. His enforced exile intensified not only his love for his native land but also his abhorrence of the doctrines of Russian Nihilism--which he saw as an alien European importation infecting the Russian psyche. Two novels of this period were thus an attempt to conjure this looming spectre of moral-social disintegration, while The Idiot offered an image of Dostoevsky's conception of the Russian Christian ideal that he hoped would take its place.
Note:
Frontmatter --
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CONTENTS --
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --
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PREFACE --
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TRANSLITERATION AND TEXTS --
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Chapter 1: Introduction --
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Chapter 2: "The Unhappiest of Mortals" --
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Chapter 3: Khlestakov in Wiesbaden --
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Chapter 4: "Our Poor Little Defenseless Boys and Girls" --
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Chapter 5: The Sources of Crime and Punishment --
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Chapter 6: From Novella to Novel --
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Chapter 7: A Reading of Crime and Punishment --
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Chapter 8: "A Little Diamond" --
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Chapter 9: The Gambler --
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Chapter 10: Escape and Exile --
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Chapter 11: Turgenev and Baden-Baden --
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Chapter 12: Geneva: Life among the Exiles --
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Chapter 13: In Search of a Novel --
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Chapter 14: "A Perfectly Beautiful Man" --
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Chapter 15: An Inconsolable Father --
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Chapter 16: Across the Alps --
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Chapter 17: The Idiot --
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Chapter 18: Historical Visions --
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Chapter 19: The Life of a Great Sinner --
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Chapter 20: The Eternal Husband --
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Chapter 21: Fathers, Sons, and Stavrogin --
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Chapter 22: Exile's Return --
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Chapter 23: History and Myth in The Devils: I --
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Chapter 24: History and Myth in The Devils: II --
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Chapter 25: The Book of the Impostors --
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Chapter 26: Conclusion --
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ABBREVIATIONS --
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NOTES --
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INDEX
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In English.
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1515/9780691209371
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691209371
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691209371
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