JSTOR

First Words

Author

Bagby, Lewis

Year

2016

Publisher

Academic Studies Press

Type

BOOK

Category

Literary Criticism

Language

English

Pages

222

ISBN

978-1-61811-681-9

Link

Last Update

09-Sep-2024

Keywords

LITERARY CRITICISM / Russian & Former Soviet Union;LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century;LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / General

Description

Dostoevsky attached introductions to his most challenging narratives, including Notes from the House of the Dead, Notes from Underground, The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, and "A Gentle Creature." Despite his clever attempts to call his readers' attention to these introductions, they have been neglected as an object of study for over 150 years. That oversight is rectified in First Words, the first systematic study of Dostoevsky's introductions. Using Genette's typology of prefaces and Bakhtin's notion of multiple voices, Lewis Bagby reveals just how important Dostoevsky's first words are to his fiction. Dostoevsky's ruses, verbal winks, and backward glances indicate a lively and imaginative author at earnest play in the field of literary discourse.

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