1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910814752403321

Autore

Ruttenburg Nancy

Titolo

Dostoevsky's democracy / / Nancy Ruttenburg

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, : Princeton University Press, c2008

ISBN

1-4008-2892-9

9786612158278

1-282-15827-9

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (288 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

891.73/3

Soggetti

Democracy in literature

Serfdom - Russia - History

Russia Politics and government 1801-1917

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-261) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Building out the house of the dead: part I -- Building out the house of the dead: part II -- Conclusion: the Russian people, this unriddled sphinx.

Sommario/riassunto

Dostoevsky's Democracy offers a major reinterpretation of the life and work of the great Russian writer by closely reexamining the crucial transitional period between the early works of the 1840's and the important novels of the 1860's. Sentenced to death in 1849 for utopian socialist political activity, the 28-year-old Dostoevsky was subjected to a mock execution and then exiled to Siberia for a decade, including four years in a forced labor camp, where he experienced a crisis of belief. It has been influentially argued that the result of this crisis was a conversion to Russian Orthodoxy and reactionary politics. But Dostoevsky's Democracy challenges this view through a close investigation of Dostoevsky's Siberian decade and its most important work, the autobiographical novel Notes from the House of the Dead (1861). Nancy Ruttenburg argues that Dostoevsky's crisis was set off by his encounter with common Russians in the labor camp, an experience that led to an intense artistic meditation on what he would call Russian "democratism." By tracing the effects of this crisis, Dostoevsky's Democracy presents a new understanding of Dostoevsky's aesthetic



and political development and his role in shaping Russian modernity itself, especially in relation to the preeminent political event of his time, peasant emancipation.