Demons

Joseph Frank

Joseph Frank is Professor Emeritus in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and Professor Emeritus in Slavic and Comparative Literature from Stanford University. He has just completed a highly acclaimed five-volume study of Dostoevsky's life and work. The second volume, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography in 1985.

Select Bibliography

Edward Wasiolek, The Notebooks for ''The Possessed', tr. Victor Terras, University of Chicago Press, 1968. Not easy reading, but an indispensable document, not only for Demons but for Dostoevsky as a whole. In developing Stavrogin, he raises fundamental issues about all his work.

W. J. Leatherbarrow, ed., Dostoevsky's The Devils, A Critical Companion, Northwestern University Press, 1999. Four English Slavists (the editor, D. C. Offord, M. V.Jones, R. M. Davison) have collaborated on this recent and excellent group of studies devoted to the novel. They treat in turn of the book's relation to Dostoevsky's biography, the context of contemporary ideas, the problem of narration and narrative technique, and the role of Stepan Trofimovich. The volume also contains selections from the relevant correspondence, and a valuable a

Nancy A. Anderson, The Perverted Ideal in Dostoevsky's The Devils, Peter Lang, N.Y., 1997. The only book in English devoted to Demons, a well-balanced and well-informed study.

Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky, His Life and Work, tr. Michael A. Minihan, Princeton University Press, 1967. Originally published by an émigré scholar in 1947, who was strongly influenced by the religious aspects of Russian Symbolism, the book still retains its value. The chapters on Demons (17 and 18) are a very good synthesis.

Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, Princeton University Press, 1995. The volume of my own five-volume study of Dostoevsky that deals with Demons. Chapters 21, 23-25 develop the ideas in my introduction.

Irving Howe, 'Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation', in Politics and the Novel, Horizon Press, 1957, 51-75. A perceptive study, one of the best brief treatments.

Jacques Catteau, 'Le Christ dans le miroir des grotesques (Les Demons)', in Dostoevsky Studies 4 (1983), 29-36. A suggestive analysis of characters in the novel as distorted Christ-images.

Philip rahv, 'Dostoevski in the The Possessed', in Essays in Literature and Politics, 1932-1972, Houghton Mifflin, 1978, 107-28. An early political reading, which had a great deal of influence.

Philip Pomper, Sergei Nechaev, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 1979. A sober study of the flamboyant revolutionary so important for Demons.

By the same author, The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia, Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1993. A good, brief introduction to the ideological world within which Dostoevsky wrote.

Chronology

DATE

AUTHOR'S LIFE

LITERARY CONTEXT

1823

Born in Moscow.

1823-31

Pushkin: Evgeny Onegin.

1825

1830

Stendhal: Le Rouge el le Noir.

1833-7

At school in Moscow.

1834

Family purchases estate of Darovoe.

Pushkin: The Queen of Spades.

1835

Balzac: Le Père Goriot.

1836

Gogol: The Government Inspector.

1837

Death of mother.

Enters St Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering.

Dickens: Pickwick Papers.

Death of Pushkin in duel.

1839

Death of father, assumed murdered by serfs.

Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme.

1840

Lermontov: A Hero of Our Time.

1841

Death of Lermontov in duel.

1842

Gogol: Dead Souls and The Overcoat.

1844

Graduates, but resigns commission in order to pursue literary career.

1845

Completes Poor Folk - acclaimed by the critic Belinsky.

1846

Publication of Poor Folk and The Double.

1847

Breaks with Belinsky. Joins Petrashevsky circle. 'The Landlady', 'A Novel in Nine Letters', 'A Petersburg Chronicle'.

Herzen: Who is to Blame? Herzen leaves Russia. Goncharov: An Ordinary Story.

1848

'A Faint Heart' and 'White Nights'.

Death of Belinsky. Thackeray: Vanity Fair.

1849

Netochka Nezvanova. Arrested and imprisoned in Peter-and-Paul fortress. Mock execution. Sentenced to hard labour and Siberian exile.

1850

Arrives at Omsk penal colony.

Turgenev: A Month in the Country. Herzen: From the Other Shore. Dickens: David Copperfield.

1851

.

1852

Tolstoy: Childhood. Turgenev: A Sportsman's Notebook. Death of Gogol.

1856

1854

Posted to Semipalatinsk.

1855

1856

Turgenev: Rudin.

1857

Marries Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva.

Flaubert: Madame Bovary. Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal.

1859

The Friend of the Family. Returnsto St Petersburg.

Turgenev: A Nest of Gentlefolk. Goncharov: Oblomov. Tolstoy: Family Happiness. Darwin: The Origin of Species.

1860

Starts publication of House of the Dead.

Turgenev: On the Eve.

George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss.

Birth of Chekhov.