Panel 3: New Readings of Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky and the Politics of Parturition: Childbirth as Political Motif in Demons
Muireann Maguire, University of Exeter
"The mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great mystery and an inexplicable one", as Shatov describes the birth of his wife's son, is one of the great unanswered questions in Dostoevsky's Demons. A baby boy is born to free-spirited former governess Maria Shatova just hours before her husband is killed by a secret clique of would-be revolutionaries. Shatov's murder and Kirillov's suicide, precipitate the new mother's fatal illness and, consequently, the infant's death within three days of entering the world. Legally Shatov's son, biologically Stavrogin's, this nameless baby represents one of several apparently unfinished subplots within Demons. Why produce a child with such complicated origins, only to kill him off? Why transform a universal symbol of hope into banal tragedy? My paper examines the metonymy between the child's brief life and the novel's theme of abortive radicalism, both of which are linked by the figure of the nihilist midwife, Arina Prokhorovna Virginskaia.
Que ‘vaut’ le récit? Narrative value and transaction in Dostoevsky’s Idiot
Jonathan Paine, Wolfson College, Oxford
Writing for readers is as much an economic activity as a creative one. Authors must publish to get paid: publishers monetise manuscripts. This paper will re-examine the role of narrative as economic transaction and the role of economic transaction in narrative, and will propose a framework for understanding how narrative behaves as an economic commodity. It will illustrate the relevance of this approach by an analysis of the first part of Dostoevsky’s Idiot from this perspective and will suggest that this leads to a significant reappraisal of Dostoevsky’s narrative technique.
Considering the role of literature as an economic activity requires us to recognise that, as Barthes’ question implies, almost all narratives are themselves transactions, in which a text is offered in exchange for the reader’s attention. My approach treats text as an economic commodity and asks how the text approaches the question of establishing its own value, whether it contains characteristics likely to promote demand and what level of control authors have over the business of selling the story. However, recognising that narrative has value does not mean that it is easy to define or understand, particularly in eras like the nineteenth century when the interaction of economic, social and technological change was causing rapid evolution in the composition and tastes of the readership. Authors have evolved different strategies to establish or test the exchange value of their texts and my paper will suggest that most prose fiction, at least of the nineteenth century, can be usefully considered within a framework which describes its economic functions in relation to three fundamental methods of ‘value discovery’: the prospectus, the auction and speculation.
The paper will suggest that Dostoevsky’s Idiot can be seen as a narrative about the value of narrative. It will argue that Dostoevsky uses Myshkin, a character without back-story whose personality is generated though the narratives he tells, as an experimental negotiating tool to explore how recipients assign value to his stories he offers. It will explore how the framework suggested above can inform this process. It will examine how the external reader’s perception of value might differ from that of the in-story characters and how this might lead to a proposed re-evaluation of Dostoevsky’s approach to narrative.
“Tick, Tock, Goes the Clock . . :” Faustian Time in Dostoevsky’s “The Meek One”
Inna Tigountsova, University of Leeds
This paper analyses literary time in Fedor Dostoevsky’s late novella “The Meek One” (Krotkaia, 1876) in its relation to Faust (1808-1832) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Particular attention will be paid to the following sections, in which tropes of time are pivotal: in Faust, the focus will be on eternity and moment in “The Prelude in the Theatre” and “Marthe’s Garden” (Part 1), and Faust’s final monologue (Part 2). Of special interest in “The Meek One” are deviations from linear chronological time in the revolver scene (Chapter 5) and the final chapter “I Was Only Five Minutes Late.” In both “The Meek One” and Faust these tropes serve to represent the notion of the Divine in the text.
Time, expressed through Goethean tropes of eternity and moment, is the key to Dostoevsky’s message in “The Meek One,” and the Mephistophelian traits of the pawnbroker hero in Dostoevsky’s story are revealed through his attempts to gain control over time, thus endeavouring to usurp the role of the Divine, the “Götterhand” of Faust.
Muireann Maguire, University of Exeter
"The mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great mystery and an inexplicable one", as Shatov describes the birth of his wife's son, is one of the great unanswered questions in Dostoevsky's Demons. A baby boy is born to free-spirited former governess Maria Shatova just hours before her husband is killed by a secret clique of would-be revolutionaries. Shatov's murder and Kirillov's suicide, precipitate the new mother's fatal illness and, consequently, the infant's death within three days of entering the world. Legally Shatov's son, biologically Stavrogin's, this nameless baby represents one of several apparently unfinished subplots within Demons. Why produce a child with such complicated origins, only to kill him off? Why transform a universal symbol of hope into banal tragedy? My paper examines the metonymy between the child's brief life and the novel's theme of abortive radicalism, both of which are linked by the figure of the nihilist midwife, Arina Prokhorovna Virginskaia.
Que ‘vaut’ le récit? Narrative value and transaction in Dostoevsky’s Idiot
Jonathan Paine, Wolfson College, Oxford
Writing for readers is as much an economic activity as a creative one. Authors must publish to get paid: publishers monetise manuscripts. This paper will re-examine the role of narrative as economic transaction and the role of economic transaction in narrative, and will propose a framework for understanding how narrative behaves as an economic commodity. It will illustrate the relevance of this approach by an analysis of the first part of Dostoevsky’s Idiot from this perspective and will suggest that this leads to a significant reappraisal of Dostoevsky’s narrative technique.
Considering the role of literature as an economic activity requires us to recognise that, as Barthes’ question implies, almost all narratives are themselves transactions, in which a text is offered in exchange for the reader’s attention. My approach treats text as an economic commodity and asks how the text approaches the question of establishing its own value, whether it contains characteristics likely to promote demand and what level of control authors have over the business of selling the story. However, recognising that narrative has value does not mean that it is easy to define or understand, particularly in eras like the nineteenth century when the interaction of economic, social and technological change was causing rapid evolution in the composition and tastes of the readership. Authors have evolved different strategies to establish or test the exchange value of their texts and my paper will suggest that most prose fiction, at least of the nineteenth century, can be usefully considered within a framework which describes its economic functions in relation to three fundamental methods of ‘value discovery’: the prospectus, the auction and speculation.
The paper will suggest that Dostoevsky’s Idiot can be seen as a narrative about the value of narrative. It will argue that Dostoevsky uses Myshkin, a character without back-story whose personality is generated though the narratives he tells, as an experimental negotiating tool to explore how recipients assign value to his stories he offers. It will explore how the framework suggested above can inform this process. It will examine how the external reader’s perception of value might differ from that of the in-story characters and how this might lead to a proposed re-evaluation of Dostoevsky’s approach to narrative.
“Tick, Tock, Goes the Clock . . :” Faustian Time in Dostoevsky’s “The Meek One”
Inna Tigountsova, University of Leeds
This paper analyses literary time in Fedor Dostoevsky’s late novella “The Meek One” (Krotkaia, 1876) in its relation to Faust (1808-1832) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Particular attention will be paid to the following sections, in which tropes of time are pivotal: in Faust, the focus will be on eternity and moment in “The Prelude in the Theatre” and “Marthe’s Garden” (Part 1), and Faust’s final monologue (Part 2). Of special interest in “The Meek One” are deviations from linear chronological time in the revolver scene (Chapter 5) and the final chapter “I Was Only Five Minutes Late.” In both “The Meek One” and Faust these tropes serve to represent the notion of the Divine in the text.
Time, expressed through Goethean tropes of eternity and moment, is the key to Dostoevsky’s message in “The Meek One,” and the Mephistophelian traits of the pawnbroker hero in Dostoevsky’s story are revealed through his attempts to gain control over time, thus endeavouring to usurp the role of the Divine, the “Götterhand” of Faust.
