This course (taught in English) explores the Four Great Murder Novels, and, time permitting, -The Adolescent-. How can all the "-isms" Dostoevsky's characters and narrators so passionately proclaim agree with what the writer himself regarded as a system of absolute values? All the explanations provided by all the "-isms" and everyone's passionately personal "-ism" are true but insufficient. What is sufficient is unpronouceable. This course teaches us how Dostoevesky encodes unshakeable values in conspicuous omissions. He develops a powerful narrative and structural technique which treats precisely what matters most as unmentionable. This allows him to be tolerant toward a multitutde of voices without losing his own, as well as to move the forbidden from the realm of external law to that of the inner voice of one's conscience. There is a mid-term examination and a final paper. (Conducted in English; no knowledge of the Russian language required.)
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: None
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