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This study offers a literary analysis and theological evaluation of the Christian themes in the five great novels of Dostoevsky - 'Crime and Punishment', 'The Idiot', 'The Adolescent', 'The Devils' and 'The Brothers Karamazov'. Dostoevsky's ambiguous treatment of religious issues in his literary works strongly differs from the slavophile Orthodoxy of his journalistic writings. In the novels Dostoevsky deals with Christian basic values, which are presented via a unique tension between the fictionality of the Christian characters and the readers' experience of the existential reality of their religious problems.
‘[This] sparklingly written book […] is a refreshing exception […] by its departure from an original literary analysis and struggle against biased interpretations […Van den Bercken] has with verve succeeded in demonstrating the importance that theology – if practiced in a selfcritical way – can have for the science of literature.’ —Pieter Boulogne, ‘Tijdschrift voor Theologie’
Wil van den Bercken is a Slavist and professor of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). His publications include 'Ideology and Atheism in the Soviet Union' (1988), 'Holy Russia and Christian Europe: East and West in the Religious Ideology of Russia' (1999) and 'Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western Christianity' (ed., 2005). He is editor-in-chief of the 'Journal of Eastern Christian Studies'.
Introduction; Religious Interpretations of Dostoevsky; The Realism of Dostoevsky’s Fictional Christianity; Christian Themes in ‘Crime and Punishment’; Religious Discussions in ‘The Idiot’ and ‘The Adolescent’; Christian Voices in ‘The Devils’; The Spirituality of the Monk Zosima in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’; The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor: Literary Irony and Theological Seriousness; Dostoevsky’s ‘Grand Inquisitor’ and Vladimir Solovyov’s ‘Antichrist’; Physical and Divine Beauty: The Aesthetical-Ethical Dilemma in Dostoevsky’s Novels; Conclusion; Notes; References; Index of Names