The University of Wisconsin Press


Russian Literature / Literary Criticism




A Karamazov Companion
Commentary on the Genesis, Language, and Style of Dostoevsky's Novel
Victor Terras
With a new preface


"Few American scholars are as qualified to write about Dostoevsky and nineteenth-century Russian literature as Victor Terras."
—David Matual, International Fiction Review

The text of The Brothers Karamazov is removed from English-speaking readers today not only by time but also by linguistic and cultural boundaries. Victor Terras's companion work provides readers with a richer understanding of the Dostoevsky novel as the expression of a philosophy and a work of art.

In his introduction, Terras outlines the genesis, main ideas, and structural peculiarities of the novel as well as Dostoevsky's political, philosophical, and aesthetic stance. The detailed commentary takes the reader through the novel, clarifying aspects of Russian life, the novel's sociopolitical background, and a number of polemic issues. Terras identifies and explains hundreds of literary and biblical quotations and allusions. He discusses symbols, recurrent images, and structural stylistic patterns, including those lost in English translation.

Victor Terras is the Henry L. Goddard University Professor of Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature emeritus at Brown University. His many books include
Reading Dostoevsky, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press; The Idiot: An Interpretation; and A History of Russian Literature, as well as translations of Dostoevsky's works.

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August 2002
LC: 80-005117 PG
496 pp. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2

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Paper $21.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-08314-4
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The 1981 cloth edition ISBN 978-0-299-08310-6 is out of print.

 

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