Dostoevsky and English modernism, 1900-1930

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Bibliographic Information

Dostoevsky and English modernism, 1900-1930

Peter Kaye

Cambridge University Press, 1999

  • : hardback
  • : pbk.

Available at  / 22 libraries

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

When Constance Garnett's translations (1910-20) made Dostoevsky's novels accessible in England for the first time they introduced a disruptive and liberating literary force, and English novelists had to confront a new model and rival. The writers who are the focus of this study - Lawrence, Woolf, Bennett, Conrad, Forster, Galsworthy and James - either admired or feared Dostoevsky as a monster who might dissolve all literary and cultural distinctions. Though their responses differed greatly, these writers were unanimous in their inability to recognize Dostoevsky as a literary artist. They viewed him instead as a psychologist, a mystic, a prophet and, in the cases of Lawrence and Conrad, a hated rival who compelled creative response. This study constructs a map of English modernist novelists' misreadings of Dostoevsky, and in so doing it illuminates their aesthetic and cultural values and the nature of the modern English novel.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Prophetic rage and rivalry: D. H. Lawrence
  • 3. A modernist ambivalence: Virginia Woolf
  • 4. Sympathy, truth, and artlessness: Arnold Bennett
  • 5. Keeping the monster at bay: Joseph Conrad
  • 6. Dostoevsky and the gentleman-writers: E. M. Forster, John Galsworthy, and Henry James
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Selected bibliography
  • Index.

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