Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death : : or Language Haunted by Sex / / Julia Kristeva.

• VerfasserIn: Kristeva, Julia,
• MitwirkendeR: Mortimer, Armine Kotin,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2023]; 2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Part I: The Flood of Language -- 1. The Condemned Man, the Sacred Malady, and the Sun -- 2. Dostoyevsky, "Author of My Life" -- 3. In the Steps of the Liberated Convict -- 4. Beyond Neurosis -- 5. The God- Man, the Man- God -- 6. The Purloined Letter -- 7. Everything Is Permitted -- Part II: A Carnivalesque Theologian -- Introduction -- 8. The Russian Virus -- 9. Christocentrism -- 10. The Pleasures of Evil and Misfortune -- 11. The National Christ -- 12. Catholicism, Atheism, Nihilism -- 13. The Nihilist Seeking God -- 14. Laughter, Spokesperson for the Obscene -- 15. "The Novel Is a Poem" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index