Consequences of Consciousness Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy [Hardcover]

Russian psychological prose has made a distinct contribution to world culturenot only to literature, but also to practical psychology and even to neuropsychology.Consequences of Consciousnessfocuses primarily on Russian ideas of the self and subjectivity, and how these ideas find expression in the fiction of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoythe 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.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 studyTolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880(1993), editor (with Robin Feuer Miller) ofKathryn Feuer's Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace(1996), and editor ofThe Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy(2002). She was editor of Tolstoy Studies Journal for eight years, and is now President of the Tolstoy Society.Consequences of Consciousnessshows how great Russian authors conversed with each other through their fictions as they explored both the limits and the autonomy of subjective consciousness. Consequences of Consciousnessoffers a particularly rich sense of the interactions among these three writers (and some others, like Herzen) as, in overt and implicit reference to each other, they debated and redebated ethics, meaning, and selfhood...I hope I do not exaggerate, but it seems to me that Orwin has put her finger on the pulse of Russian realism and reminded us why it matters. The great Russian Realists were also great lay psychologilsj