19th Century Russian Literature - Literary Criticism
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Overview
The Devils (also translated as The Possessed) is one of the four major novels of the great nineteenth-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. This book is the first full-length English-language study of The Devils to examine the novel as a unified whole. Its approach is based upon recognition of a central theme of Dostoevsky's thought: the human need of and search for an ideal transcending the needs and demands of one's own self. Such an ideal may be expressed in many spheres - in religion, in the relations between human beings, and in aesthetics. As this work demonstrates, The Devils is a powerful psychological and sociological study of what occurs when the ideal of transcendence is denied in each of these spheres and a perverted ideal - an anti-ideal - is set up in its place.Editorials
Booknews
The characters in Dostoevsky's tend to see the protagonist Stavrogin as a savior figure. But Anderson, a scholar/ librarian at Yale University, maintains that Stavrogin is in fact an antichrist figure<-->an individual who asserts his will at any cost and represents Dostoevsky's idea of a strong man pushed to its extreme. Anderson also discusses revolutionary activity in the novel and the way in which the character Stephan Verkhovensky comes to represent ideal beauty. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.Book Details
Published
January 1, 1998
Publisher
Lang, Peter Publishing, Incorporated
Pages
173
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780820433189