Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy

Russian psychological prose has made a distinct contribution to world culture--not only to literature, but also to practical psychology and even to neuropsychology. Consequences of Consciousness focuses primarily on Russian ideas of the self and subjectivity, and how these ideas find expression in the fiction of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy--the most important founding authors of the Russian school of psychological realism. These writers explore both the limits and the autonomy of subjective consciousness, and their books are as relevant today as they have ever been. Through close analysis of many well-known texts, Orwin reveals that these three authors conversed with each other through their works. She emphasizes the role Western thought played in the development of their psychological prose and how it was transformed by a Russian context.

Author: Donna Tussing Orwin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 10/11/2007
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.16h x 6.40w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780804757034

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2008 pg. 235

About the Author
Donna Tussing Orwin is Professor of Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of the prize-winning study Tolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (1993), editor (with Robin Feuer Miller) of Kathryn Feuer's Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace (1996), and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy (2002). She was editor of Tolstoy Studies Journal for eight years, and is now President of the Tolstoy Society.