Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia / / Irina Paperno.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Paperno, Irina,
• MitwirkendeR: Paperno, Irina,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

In the popular and scientific imagination, suicide has always been an enigmatic act that defies, and yet demands, explanation. Throughout the centuries, philosophers and writers, journalists and scientists have attempted to endow this act with meaning. In the nineteenth century, and especially in Russia, suicide became the focus for discussion of such issues as the immortality of the soul, free will and determinism, the physical and the spiritual, the individual and the social. Analyzing a variety of sources—medical reports, social treatises, legal codes, newspaper articles, fiction, private documents left by suicides—Irina Paperno describes the search for the meaning of suicide. Paperno focuses on Russia of the 1860s–1880s, when suicide was at the center of public attention.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Language -- Introduction: The Symbolic Meanings of Suicide -- 1. Suicide and Western Science: Man's Two Bodies -- 2. Russian Views: Church, Law, and Science -- 3. Suicide in the Russian Press -- 4. Suicide Notes and Diaries -- 5. Dostoevsky's Fiction: The Metaphysics of Suicide -- 6. Diary of a Writer: Dostoevsky and His Reader -- 7. Portrait of a Journalist: Albert Kovner -- Notes -- Appendix: The Russian Texts -- Index