Abstract
Excerpt: Dostoevsky's works are often referred to as “novels of ideas” because his main characters embody the unique ideological tensions of modernity, tensions that began to erupt in Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century as the Enlightenment values of scientific materialism, secularism, and rational egoism were being rapidly imported from the West and embraced by the Russian intelligentsia in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky saw these new beliefs as conflicting with the deeply sedimented values of the Orthodox Church, values rooted in religious notions of communal belongingness, love, and self-sacrifice characterized in the mir or rural village of the Russian peasantry. On this view, Dostoevsky's greatest characters, the underground man (“Notes from the Underground”), Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment), and Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov) reveal different responses to these ideological tensions that, in turn, inform their inner turmoil. In this regard, Bernard Paris, in his new book Dostoevsky's Greatest Characters, takes a heterodox view by suggesting that it is, in fact, the characters’ psychology and childhood experiences that shape their responses to modernity.