The Perverted Ideal in Dostoevsky's The Devils (Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature) - Hardcover

Anderson, Nancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820433187 ISBN 13: 9780820433189

Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

The Author: Nancy K. Anderson is currently employed in the Slavic and East European Collection at Yale University Library. She received a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from Yale University. The Perverted Ideal in Dostoevsky's 'The Devils', Dr. Anderson's first major work, is the result of many years' study and love of Dostoevsky.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820433187
• ISBN 13: 9780820433189
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 173