A Dostoevskii Companion: Texts and Contexts

A Dostoevskii Companion provides a compendium of primary and secondary sources for readers and students seeking to probe beneath the surface of Dostoevskii's works. The editors have assembled a range of texts that illuminate Dostoevskii, including some from his own era—excerpts from his correspondence, his journalism and other writers' reviews of his works—and others from the rich field of Dostoevskii criticism, ranging from classic accounts by Berdiaev or Shestov to writings by the best Russian and Western scholars in the contemporary academy. The volume is divided into three sections, covering Dostoevskii's biography and his context, his aesthetics, and the major themes in his work, respectively. Rather than treat each of Dostoevskii’s major works in isolation, our volume takes an integrative approach, with each of the ten chapters addressing a key issue in Dostoevskii studies that cuts across his oeuvre. This approach allows readers to discover connections between texts, while also mapping how Dostoevskii's ideas change over time, and how Dostoevskii criticism has evolved over the past 150 years. The volume does not seek to offer a single definitive interpretation of the writer, but rather to introduce students to the lively, ongoing debates about Dostoevskii, which extend far beyond literary studies into fields such as philosophy, psychology, and theology. A Dostoevskii Companion will be of particular interest to undergraduates and beginning graduate students, but is also accessible to the general reader.