The Literary and Cultural Rhetoric of Victimhood - Western Europe, 1970-2005

Addressed to all readers of Dostoevsky, as well as to teachers, students, and specialists, this lucidly-written study approaches the underground man, Raskolnikov, and Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov as imagined human beings whose feelings, behaviors, and ideas are expressions of their personalities and experience. While asserting the autonomy of Dostoevsky's characters, Paris shows that there is a tension between them and the author's rhetoric and demonstrates that the characters often escape their illustrative roles. By paying close attention to mimetic detail, this book seeks to recover Dostoevsky's psychological intuitions and fully to appreciate his brilliance in characterization.