Chaos, Apocalypse, The Laws of Nature
Autonomy and "Unity" in Dostoevskii's Idiot
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4211561 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gary Rosenshield (University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1991 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 879-889 |
| Publication date | 1991-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Slavic Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2500469 |
| OpenAlex | W2323245841 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
Addressing what he sees as serious disjunctures in characterization and narrative technique, Joseph Frank has called Idiot "the most disorganized," of Fedor Dostoevskii's major works. The first part of the novel so differs from the last three parts, Frank holds, that it may "best be read as an independent novella." Although, undoubtedly, many subtle structural, thematic, and rhetorical elements tie the novel together, Idiot does seem at times to generate as much centrifugal as centripetal force. Tackling this issue head on, Robin Feuer Miller, with judicious use of reader-response theory, succeeds in imposing some order on the narrational disjunctures of the text, setting up a hierarchy of narrators and narrative personae. More problematic, however, is the question of point of view in the larger sense. In the Bakhtinian sense, point of view manifests itself in the relation between the different narrators of the novel as the autonomous voices of the characters and the narrator enter into an unfinished dialogue. The broader use of the term concerns the novel's worldviews, or master plots, which variously govern and structure the presentation of character, story, and metaphor
Aesthetics · Art · Character (mathematics · Epistemology · Hierarchy · Idiot · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Narrative · Novella · Poetics · Poetry · Relation (database · Rhetorical question · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and Literary Analysis · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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