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Dostoevsky attached introductions to his most challenging narratives. Despite his clever attempts to call his readers' attention to these introductions, they have been neglected as an object of study. That oversight is rectified in
First Words, the first systematic study of Dostoevsky's introductions.
List of contents
Note on Transliteration Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Model Prefaces from Russian Literature Chapter 2: Dostoevsky's Initial Post-Siberian Work Chapter 3: Playing with Authorial Identities Chapter 4: Monsters Roam the Text Chapter 5: Re-Contextualizing Introductions Chapter 6: Anxious to the End Conclusion Bibliography Index
About the author
Lewis Bagby, Professor Emeritus of Russian, University of Wyoming, is the author of Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Russian Byronism and editor of A Hero of Our Times: Critical Articles. He has published widely on Russian Romanticism, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Bakhtin.
Summary
Dostoevsky attached introductions to his most challenging narratives. Despite his clever attempts to call his readers' attention to these introductions, they have been neglected as an object of study. That oversight is rectified in First Words, the first systematic study of Dostoevsky's introductions.
Additional text
"What do Dostoevsky’s introductions contribute to our understanding of the works in which they appear? By raising and answering this question in his excellent study of Dostoevsky’s first-person narratives, Lewis Bagby demonstrates that Dostoevsky’s ‘first words’ are ‘complex, multifunctional, variegated rhetorical phenomena’ (xiv)."
