Dostoevsky & Modernity

Catalog description

Dostoevsky himself may have been the first person to characterize his own work as specifically “modern.” Distinguishing himself from the “historical novelists” who focused on the life forms of the landowning aristocracy, he characterized his specific take on the novelistic form as particularly capable of grasping the fleeting phenomena of Russia’s confused present. This course explores Dostoevsky’s novelistic form, both early and late, as a particularly helpful prism for understanding the conditions, experience and philosophical ramifications of modernity. Questions of the relationship between modernity and the novel form more generally will be inevitably raised to mediate between Dostoevsky’s specific novels and the various theorizations of the modern. Readings from Dostoevsky: Poor People, Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov. Theoretical readings from Marx, Weber, Giddens, Charles Taylor, Foucault, Lukács, Bakhtin, etc. Readings and discussions will be in English. (Ph. D. students, please speak to instructor before registering.)