A Gentle Creatures and other stories

Name: A Gentle Creatures and other stories
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780192838285

by Unknown Author

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155 pages1999Oxford University Press, USAISBN 9780192838285

FictionClassics

About this book

In the stories in this volume Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality and also his own ambiguous attitude to utopianism, themes central to many of his great novels. In White Nights the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound loneliness and estrangement from 'living life'. Despite his sentimental friendship with Nastenka, his final withdrawal into the world of the imagination anticipates the retreat into the 'underground' of many of Dostoevsky's later intellectual heroes. A Gentle Creature and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man show how such withdrawal from reality can end in spiritual desolation and moral indifference and how, in Dostoevsky's view, the tragedy of the alienated individual can be resolved only by the rediscovery of a sense of compassion and responsibility towards fellow human beings. This new translation captures the power and lyricism of Dostoevsky's writing, while the introduction examines the stories in relation to one another and to his novels.

Publication Details

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1999
Pages: 155
ISBN: 9780192838285
Language: en

About Unknown Author

Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevsky was a journalist and short-story writer, whose psychological penetration into the human soul profoundly influenced the 20th century novel. Dostoevsky's novels have much autobiographical elements, but ultimately they deal with moral and philosophical questions. He presented interacting characters with contrasting views or ideas about freedom of choice, Socialism, atheisms, good and evil, happiness and so forth. Dostoevsky's central obsession was God, whom his characters constantly search through painful errors and humiliations. ([Source][1]) Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his *Notes from Underground* (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written." A prominent figure in world literature, Dostoyevsky is often acknowledged by critics as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. ([Source][2]) Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский (рус. дореф. Ѳедоръ Михайловичъ Достоевскій; 30 октября [11 ноября] 1821, Москва, Российская империя — 28 января [9 февраля] 1881, Санкт-Петербург, Российская империя) — русский писатель, мыслитель, философ и публицист. Член-корреспондент Петербургской АН с 1877 года. ([Source][3]) Как в начале, так и в продолжении своего литературного творчества после четырёх лет каторги и ссылки за участие в кружке Петрашевского Достоевский выступал в качестве новатора в русле традиций русского реализма, что не получило должной оценки современников при жизни писателя. ([Source][3]) После смерти Достоевский был признан классиком русской литературы и одним из лучших романистов мирового значения, считается первым представителем персонализма в России. Творчество русского писателя оказало воздействие