Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays

by René Wellek

Overview

First published in 1962, the present volume is a collection of critical essays on selected works by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the famous 19th century Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher.

Critical evaluation of Fyodor Dostoevsky has been marked by sharp and violently bitter extremes. René Wellek has assembled a wide spectrum of these varied critical attitudes toward the works of the great Russian “tragedian of ideas.” Dostoevsky’s work is seen from psychoanalytical, existential, theological, and Marxist points of view. Professor Wellek’s introduction sketches the history of Dostoevsky criticism and influence in all main countries—a task never before attempted.

The essays in this collection are:

PHILIP RAHV—Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment

MURRAY KRIEGER—Dostoevsky’s “Idiot”: The Curse of Saintliness

IRVING HOWE—Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation

ELISEO VIVAS—The Two Dimensions of Reality in The Brothers Karamazov

D. H. LAWRENCE—Preface to Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor”

SIGMUND FREUD—Dostoevsky and Parricide

GEORG LUKÁCS—Dostoevsky

DMITRI CHIZHEVSKY—The Theme of the Double in Dostoevsky

V. V. ZENKOVSKY—Dostoevsky’s Religious and Philosophical Views

DEREK TRAVERSI—Dostoevsky

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789126242
Publisher:	Valmy Publishing
Publication date:	12/05/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	246
File size:	672 KB

About the Author

René Wellek (1903-1995) was a Czech-American comparative literary critic.

Born on August 22, 1903 and raised in Vienna, speaking Czech and German, he studied literature at the Charles University in Prague, and was active among the Prague School linguists there, before moving to teach at School of Slavonic and East European Studies (now part of University College London) in 1935. His younger brother Albert Wellek (1904-1972) was one of the founders of musical psychology and lived in Germany. Before 1939, Wellek published some 60 items, all written in Czech.

From 1939, the beginning of WWII in Europe, Wellek lived in America. He taught first at the University of Iowa for seven years until 1946, and then at Yale University, where he established and chaired a department of comparative literature. In 1949, Wellek published a landmark volume entitled Theory of Literature with Austin Warren, one of the first works to systematize literary theory.

Beginning in the 1960s, Wellek defended the New Critics against the condemnation of their work in the name of a structuralist-influenced literary theory, and is thus sometimes classed as a conservative critic. Wellek advocated a synthesized approach to literary criticism, one that included 1) literary theory, 2) a careful study of previous works of criticism, and 3) a thorough understanding of the surrounding history involved in an author’s creation of a work, including the author’s personal history and milieu.

The crowning work of Wellek’s career was an eight-volume magnum opus entitled A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, the last two volumes of which he dictated from his bed in a nursing home at age 90.

He died in Hamden, Connecticut on November 11, 1995, aged 92.