APPLYING FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY TO THE LITERATURE AND LIFE OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

As a writer who famously aimed to capture the essence of humanity in his literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky often created incredibly intriguing, yet quite complex characters to accomplish this goal. Though psychology had not yet grown into an independent discipline during Dostoevsky\u27s tenure as a novelist, as the field began to emerge it became clearer that his literature touched upon many psychological tenets. Specifically, the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud would prove to be very similar to Dostoevsky\u27s writing, prompting many comparisons. This paper aims to apply Freudian psychological theory to Dostoevsky\u27s Crime and Punishment and The Double in an attempt to understand the intricacies of the focal characters. Additionally, it intends to look at the life of Dostoevsky through a Freudian perspective while providing insight into how his personal experiences have influenced his literature

Dostoevsky’s Women: Finding a Voice

In Fyodor Dostoevsky\u27s works Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot, the characters of Lisa, Sonya, and Nastasya Filippovna reveal the author\u27s inability to envision an autonomous woman leading a functional life independent of male influence. These three female characters possess distinct levels of credibility, independence, and predictability. In an evaluation of Dostoevsky\u27s female characters, one must not only address whether these characters are well-rounded, but also question whether Dostoevsky\u27s female characters author their own stories with a unique voice or whether male protagonists always overpower them. Both Lisa and Sonya are ultimately defined by the male protagonists in their respective novels and are so idealized that they seem unrealistic. While Lisa and Sonya fail to be either completely credible or well-rounded, Dostoevsky proves with his character of Nastasya Filippovna that he is capable of creating a believable, authentic, and autonomous female character. Nevertheless, it is precisely this independent character who actively seeks her own self-destruction, illustrating that the credible, autonomous cannot properly function in Dostoevsky\u27s literary world

The Chronotope of Humanness : Bakhtin and Dostoevsky

Bakhtin and Dostoevsky shared the conviction that human life must be understood in terms of temporality. Both thinkers were obsessed with time’s relation to life as people experience it. For each, a rich sense of humanity demanded a chronotope of open time. In many respects, the views of Bakhtin and Dostoevsky coincide. Theologically speaking, one could fairly call them both heretics, as we shall see. Their differences reflect their different starting points. Bakhtin began with ethics, whereas Dostoevsky thought about life first and foremost in terms of psychology. For Bakhtin, any viable view of the world had first of all to give a rich meaning to moral responsibility. Dostoevsky could accept no view that was false to his sense of how the human mind thought and felt

The Plight of Prostitution: A Study of Sonia Marmeladov in Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky\u27s celebrated novel Crime and Punishment (1866) exposes complex moral issues testing the urban population of nineteenth century St. Petersburg. Prostitution is one theme that complicates the novel, and Dostoevsky invites readers to consider the prostitute’s point of view. In 1843, the tsarist Ministry of Internal Affairs appointed “medical-police committees” to regulate prostitution in Russia. Registered prostitutes were typically poor urban women, and they became subject to strict rules. Sonia Marmeladov, an emblem of virtue in Crime and Punishment, endures the horrors of commercialized sex. Though her virtue and religious faith far exceed that of the average person, her character is representative of the voiceless, faceless woman who resorts to prostitution because she is desperate to escape poverty. Dostoevsky\u27s social commentary of the holy prostitute defends the dignity of the marginalized woman and condemns society for condoning the industry as an unavoidable practice. The history of prostitution in St. Petersburg helps shed light on the stigmas of the profession in Dostoevsky\u27s time

Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov, and Freedom in Crime and Punishment

An analysis of the character of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky\u27s Crime and Punishment and his journey towards a truer understanding of freedom. This paper comments on \u27freedom\u27 as understood by St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and applies this view of freedom to the characters of Raskolnikov, Sonya, Svidrigailov and Porfiry. The paper shows how the Thomistic-Aristotelian view of freedom is prevalent in this work by Dostoevsky

A BEAUTY THAT SAVES: DOSTOEVSKY’S THEOLOGY OF BEAUTY THE IDIOT

This paper examines Dostoevsky’s understanding of beauty and its place in The Idiot. Examining the historical and immediate environment in which Dostoevsky wrote the novel provides crucial insights into his conception of beauty. It is argued that the beauty Dostoevsky encountered in Florence colored his use of beauty in The Idiot. The use recent popes have made of Dostoevsky’s works also underscore the Christian theology of his ideal. From the post-Vatican II pontiffs and from Dostoevsky’s own writing it becomes clear that Dostoevsky’s view of beauty flows from the Christian belief that Christ is the Supreme Beauty. The beauty of Prince Myshkin and other characters all flow from this Beauty by reflecting Him in different ways. Ultimately, however, Myshkin fails to bring about salvation. He lacks the perfect beauty and goodness of Christ, the only one who can save. This salvific beauty is noticeably missing from the novel. The Hans Holbein painting of “Christ in the Tomb,” it is argued, lacks beauty because it fails to show forth the Incarnation. Instead, it depicts Christ without any hint of his divinity and without any hope of resurrection. Through this examination of Dostoevsky’s context and theology, it is concluded that the lack of a beauty that saves in The Idiot is meant to underscore mankind’s inability to save itself

Dostoevsky\u27s (translated by Boris Jakim) The Insulted and Injured (Book Review)

A Review of The Insulted and Injured, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. 368 pp. $18.00; ISBN 9780802825902

Final Words, Final Shots: Kurosawa, Bortko and the Conclusion of Dostoevsky???s Idiot

In their article "Final Words, Final Shots: Kurosawa, Bortko, and the Conclusion of Dostoevsky???s Idiot" Robert O. Efird and Saera Yoon discuss film adaptations of Dostoevsky???s novel. Both in his homeland and abroad, the major works of Fyodor Dostoevsky have largely made for disappointing film adaptations. This article examines the cultural diversity and aesthetic motivations underlying two very different adaptations of his novel Idiot, with particular attention to the concluding scenes. Both Akira Kurosawa and Vladimir Bortko follow the novelist's lead by hinting at some form of hope and future redemption amidst the tragedy but, for different reasons, they both fail to capture the rich ambiguity and creative ambivalence of Dostoevsky's final words. As the authors argue, the novelist's fluid dialogic aesthetic tends to disappear in visual adaptations, yet paradoxically thrives when released into new contexts less dependent on fidelity to his words. These two adaptations, despite their relative success, demonstrate the inherent difficulty of cinematizing the dynamics of Dostoevsky's art

Raskolnikov: Not the Typical Criminal Man

Criminologists in the nineteenth century gave much effort to identify, classify, and understand the physical, social, and psychological characteristics of the world’s criminals. Using the lens of these early criminological theories and the scholarly interpretations of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, this paper explores the dimensions of Raskolnikov as a criminal character. Ultimately, these developing psychological and criminal anthropological theories are not successful in explaining the character of Raskolnikov. This exploration sheds light on a fundamental characteristic of human nature that Dostoevsky understands. Just as Raskolnikov is unable to be fully characterized by his utilitarian social theories, and by the theories of early criminologists, humanity is fundamentally unable to be reduced to a theory