Writing with Dostoevsky

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course combines close reading of Dostoevsky's The Idiot with analysis of the drafts for the novel and exploration of the author's writing process. We will pursue techniques of the French school of genetic criticism, in which manuscripts are treated with the same attention and respect as finished works in an effort to better understand the creative process, as well as a Russian variant of this practice, in which drafts were published to complete publication of canonical authors and were analyzed to better understand canonical/final versions of a work. To these traditions we will add a third variant, as we consider the possibility of reading the final and earlier drafts together as a polytext, entering the final version into dialogue with alternatives and abandoned ideas, considering the novel both as a finished work and as a complex of creative potentials. Russian language is not required for the course, as the drafts were translated by former University of Chicago professor Edward Wasiolek.