First Words On Dostoevsky's Introductions [Paperback]

Dostoevsky attached introductions to his most challenging narratives, includingNotes from the House of the Dead,Notes from Underground,The Devils,The Brothers Karamazov, and A Gentle Creature. Despite his clever attempts to call his readers attention to these introductions, they have been neglected as an object of study for over 150 years. That oversight is rectified inFirst Words, the first systematic study of Dostoevskys introductions. Using Genettes typology of prefaces and Bakhtins notion of multiple voices, Lewis Bagby reveals just how important Dostoevskys first words are to his fiction. Dostoevskys ruses, verbal winks, and backward glances indicate a lively and imaginative author at earnest play in the field of literary discourse. Drawing attention to a surprisingly neglected aspect of Dostoevskys works, Lewis Bagby deftly reveals how Dostoevsky used introductionsor prologues or forewords or prefacesto subtly indicate themes and structures of many of his most important writings, such asNotes from the UndergroundandThe Brothers Karamazov. Taking that cue, Bagby offers rich and newly insightful interpretations of Dostoevskys works large and small, alerting readers how to read them from Dostoevskys point of view. Bagbys reading of the introduction to A Gentle Creature is nothing short of a revelation. The book will likely surprise, and will indeed enlighten, many a reader. Students, teachers, and admirers of Dostoevskys novels, of whom there are many, will want to have Lewis Bagbys book at hand or nearby. In this engaging and provocative study, Bagby offers the most extensive analysis to date of what he calls Dostoevskys first words, the introductions that appear in many of Dostoevskys texts...With its hard look at a new, little understood, but absolutely crucial, area of Dostoevskys work, Bagbys study is a useful guide to a significant body of Dostoevskys fiction, and is especially well l³(