Poetic, stunning, fascinating, and deeply insightful, Kristeva’s readings of Dostoyevsky are as much about us and our time as they are about him and his works. This book is a celebration of literature and language as an antidote to the extremes of nihilism and fundamentalism that still threaten us today.

- Kelly Oliver, philosopher, novelist, and professor emerita, Vanderbilt University,

The full force of Julia Kristeva’s lifetime of (psycho)analyzing revolutionary writers and speaking beings come together in this masterful analysis of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s life and work. Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic novels, as Kristeva brilliantly shows, exemplify the human capacity for sublimation. Decades before Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and its primary processes, Dostoyevsky was very deliberately wielding the sting of the negative, turning demons into words, new meanings, and art.

- Noëlle McAfee, author of <i>Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis</i>,

Julia Kristeva has been both attracted and repelled by Dostoyevsky since her youth. In this extraordinary book, by turns poetic and intensely personal, she brings her unique critical sensibility to bear on the tormented and visionary Russian author.Kristeva ranges widely across Dostoyevsky’s novels and his journalism, plunging deep into the great works—and many of the smaller ones—to investigate her fascination with the Russian author. What emerges is a luminous vision of the writer’s achievements, seen in a wholly new way through Kristeva’s distinctive perspective on language. With her keen psychoanalytical eye, she offers brilliant insights into the passionate heroines of the great novels. Focusing on Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic writing, Kristeva also demonstrates the importance of Orthodox Christianity throughout his body of work, analyzing the complex ways his carnivalesque theology informs his fiction and commentary.An original and profound interpretation of one of the nineteenth century’s greatest writers, this book’s insights are also relevant to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—up to our unsettled present, to which Kristeva’s humane reading of the suffering Russian author brings understanding and even solace.
Les mer
Julia Kristeva has been both attracted and repelled by Dostoyevsky since her youth. In this extraordinary book, by turns poetic and intensely personal, she brings her unique critical sensibility to bear on the tormented and visionary Russian author.
Les mer
PrefacePart I: The Flood of Language1. The Condemned Man, the Sacred Malady, and the Sun2. Dostoyevsky, “Author of My Life”3. In the Steps of the Liberated Convict4. Beyond Neurosis5. The God-Man, the Man-God6. The Purloined Letter7. Everything Is PermittedPart II: A Carnivalesque Theologian8. The Russian Virus9. Christocentrism10. The Pleasures of Evil and Misfortune11. The National Christ12. Catholicism, Atheism, Nihilism13. The Nihilist Seeking God14. Laughter, Spokesperson for the Obscene15. “The Novel Is a Poem”NotesBibliographyIndex
Les mer
Poetic, stunning, fascinating, and deeply insightful, Kristeva’s readings of Dostoyevsky are as much about us and our time as they are about him and his works. This book is a celebration of literature and language as an antidote to the extremes of nihilism and fundamentalism that still threaten us today.
Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780231210515
Publisert
2023-12-19
Utgiver
Vendor
Columbia University Press
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
140 mm
Aldersnivå
UP, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
344

Forfatter

Biographical note

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”

Armine Kotin Mortimer is professor emerita of French literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the translator of Julia Kristeva’s novel The Enchanted Clock (Columbia, 2018) and the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship.