Dostoevsky and English Modernism 1900 1930

By Peter Kaye

Book Overview

When Constance Garnett's translations (1910-20) made Dostoevsky's novels accessible in England for the first time they introduced a disruptive and liberating literary force, and English novelists had to confront a new model and rival. The writers who are the focus of this study - Lawrence, Woolf, Bennett, Conrad, Forster, Galsworthy and James - either admired or feared Dostoevsky as a monster who might dissolve all literary and cultural distinctions. Though their responses differed greatly, these writers were unanimous in their inability to recognize Dostoevsky as a literary artist. They viewed him instead as a psychologist, a mystic, a prophet and, in the cases of Lawrence and Conrad, a hated rival who compelled creative response. This study constructs a map of English modernist novelists' misreadings of Dostoevsky, and in so doing it illuminates their aesthetic and cultural values and the nature of the modern English novel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521024196
• ISBN13: 9780521024198
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"