Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose fiction probes faith, moral responsibility, freedom, and psychological conflict.
Crime and Punishment: A novel about student Rodion Raskolnikov, who murders a pawnbroker and confronts guilt, punishment, and redemption. Its divided consciousness makes moral responsibility the engine of the plot.
Polyphony: A narrative form in which distinct characters retain independent voices and ideas rather than serving one authoritative viewpoint. Dostoevsky lets conflicting beliefs speak with force instead of resolving them through a single narrator.
Petrashevsky Circle: A group of Russian intellectuals who met in the 1840s to discuss literature, philosophy, and social reform. Dostoevsky’s participation led to his arrest and a death sentence later commuted.
Mikhail Bakhtin: A Russian philosopher and literary theorist known for influential studies of dialogue and the novel. Bakhtin’s account of Dostoevsky’s polyphonic form reshaped criticism of his novels.
Existentialism: A philosophical tradition concerned with freedom, responsibility, choice, and the conditions of human existence. Dostoevsky’s characters confront freedom and responsibility before existentialism became a named movement.
The Brothers Karamazov: Dostoevsky’s final novel follows the Karamazov family through murder, faith, doubt, and moral responsibility. Its family drama gathers the religious and ethical questions that preoccupied Dostoevsky.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose account is limited, distorted, or otherwise not fully trustworthy. Several narrators expose their motives even as they try to control how events are understood.
Dostoevsky's mock execution: The staged execution of Dostoevsky and other prisoners in Saint Petersburg on 22 December 1849, halted before the firing squad shot. The ordeal became a defining biographical experience and informed his writing about death.
Vissarion Belinsky: A Russian literary critic whose essays helped establish the social importance of Russian literature. Dostoevsky’s early literary success brought him into contact with Belinsky’s influential circle.
Albert Camus: A French-Algerian writer and philosopher whose works examine absurdity, revolt, and human solidarity. Camus engaged directly with Dostoevsky’s fiction, especially its treatment of rebellion and belief.