Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation

This book is an original and detailed attempt to re-examine Dostoyevsky the artist.

Jacques Catteau (Author), Audrey Littlewood (Translated by)

9780521324366, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 May 1989

568 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.5 cm, 1 kg

'Jacques Catteau's massive book is a distinguished contribution to Dostoyevsky studies, and a work that no future student of the subject will be able to neglect.' Joseph Frank, Slavic and East European Journal

Jacques Catteau's much-acclaimed book on Dostoyevsky, which has already received three literary prizes (and one medical) in France, appears here in English for the first time. It is an original and detailed attempt to re-examine Dostoyevsky the artist, tracing the creative process from its beginnings in the notebooks to its expression in the novels, and at the same time analysing the structures of time and space, the role of colour, and other important features of the texts. For this edition the author has taken the opportunity to revise his text and bring the bibliography up to date, where possible giving references to the Soviet Academy of Sciences' edition of Dostoyeysky's works and to English versions of critical sources.

Preface to the English edition
List of abbreviations
General editor's note on transliteration and references
General introduction
Part I. The Creative Environment: Introduction
1. Forms of creativity in embryo
2. The heritage
3. The heritage: literature
4. The heritage: history and philosophy
5. Illness
6. Money
Part II. The Process of Creation: Introduction
7. The writer at work
8. The great dialogue: the news item
9. The great dialogue: migrant images
10. The play of dialogue
11. The unity of thought in the novel
12. The summit of creative interrogation: 'The Life of a Great Sinner'
13. A Raw Youth: reasons for choice
14. A Raw Youth: the appearance of the vision
15. A Raw Youth: the human architecture
16. A Raw Youth: the idea of the novel
17. The composition of the novel in Dostoyevsky's work: choice of chronicle form
18. Composition of the novel in A Raw Youth: chronicle and stories
Part III. Time and Space in the World of the Novels: Introduction
19. The master of men and hours
20. Chronology and temporality in The Idiot
21. The ascending spiral
22. Time of power and power of time
23. The heavens of eternity
24. The dream of space and the space of the real
25. The inventory and the expressionist orchestration of scenery and lighting
26. The semantics of colour
27. The hero in space: sighting and seeing
Conclusion
Notes
Select bibliography
Index of names.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]