Description
Growing up in Bulgaria, Julia Kristeva was warned by her father not to read Dostoyevsky. "Of course, and as usual," she recalls, "I disobeyed paternal orders and plunged into Dosto. Dazzled, overwhelmed, engulfed." Kristeva would go on to become one of the most important figures in European intellectual life-and she would return over and over again to Dostoyevsky, still haunted and enraptured by the force of his writing.
In this book, Kristeva embarks on a wide-ranging and stimulating inquiry into Dostoyevsky's work and the profound ways it has influenced her own thinking. Reading across his major novels and shorter works, Kristeva offers incandescent insights into the potent themes that draw her back to the Russian master: God, otherness, violence, eroticism, the mother, the father, language itself. Both personal and erudite, the book intermingles Kristeva's analysis with her recollections of Dostoyevsky's significance in different intellectual moments-the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the Thaw-era Eastern Bloc, the debates over poststructuralism in 1960s France, and today's arguments about whether it can be said that "everything is permitted." Brilliant and vivid, this is an essential book for admirers of both Kristeva and Dostoyevsky. It also features an illuminating foreword by Rowan Williams that reflects on the significance of Kristeva's reading of Dostoyevsky for his own understanding of religious writing.
About the Author
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Universite de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her most recent Columbia University Press book is Passions of Our Time (2019).
Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is the author of many books, including Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (2008).
Jody Gladding is a poet who has translated dozens of works from French, including Kristeva's The Severed Head: Capital Visions (Columbia, 2014).
Reviews
Part spiritual autobiography, part free association, Kristeva's study of Dostoyevsky becomes the occasion for a journey through the life of the mind. In searing harmony with her subject, she once again demonstrates how it is only out of the depths of abjection that human creativity is born. One of her most exuberant and challenging works, Dostoyevsky, or The Flood of Language offers us Dostoyevsky as lascivious, blasphemous, and saint, taking us into the core of Kristeva's unique vision. -- Jacqueline Rose, author of On Violence and On Violence Against Women
Dostoevsky, as Kristeva's reminder about language and the sacred helps us guess, loves religious mischief precisely because he cares so much about religious faith. -- Michael Wood * London Review of Books *
Dostoyevsky scholars will find this worth a look. * Publishers Weekly *
One need not be a post-structural scholar to appreciate how a reading of Dostoevsky's many voices can help navigate this world's 'unresolvable tensions.' * Christian Century *
Book Information
ISBN 9780231203326
Author Julia Kristeva
Format Hardback
Page Count 112
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
In this book, Kristeva embarks on a wide-ranging and stimulating inquiry into Dostoyevsky's work and the profound ways it has influenced her own thinking. Reading across his major novels and shorter works, Kristeva offers incandescent insights into the potent themes that draw her back to the Russian master: God, otherness, violence, eroticism, the mother, the father, language itself. Both personal and erudite, the book intermingles Kristeva's analysis with her recollections of Dostoyevsky's significance in different intellectual moments-the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the Thaw-era Eastern Bloc, the debates over poststructuralism in 1960s France, and today's arguments about whether it can be said that "everything is permitted." Brilliant and vivid, this is an essential book for admirers of both Kristeva and Dostoyevsky. It also features an illuminating foreword by Rowan Williams that reflects on the significance of Kristeva's reading of Dostoyevsky for his own understanding of religious writing.
About the Author
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Universite de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her most recent Columbia University Press book is Passions of Our Time (2019).
Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is the author of many books, including Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (2008).
Jody Gladding is a poet who has translated dozens of works from French, including Kristeva's The Severed Head: Capital Visions (Columbia, 2014).
Reviews
Part spiritual autobiography, part free association, Kristeva's study of Dostoyevsky becomes the occasion for a journey through the life of the mind. In searing harmony with her subject, she once again demonstrates how it is only out of the depths of abjection that human creativity is born. One of her most exuberant and challenging works, Dostoyevsky, or The Flood of Language offers us Dostoyevsky as lascivious, blasphemous, and saint, taking us into the core of Kristeva's unique vision. -- Jacqueline Rose, author of On Violence and On Violence Against Women
Dostoevsky, as Kristeva's reminder about language and the sacred helps us guess, loves religious mischief precisely because he cares so much about religious faith. -- Michael Wood * London Review of Books *
Dostoyevsky scholars will find this worth a look. * Publishers Weekly *
One need not be a post-structural scholar to appreciate how a reading of Dostoevsky's many voices can help navigate this world's 'unresolvable tensions.' * Christian Century *
Book Information
ISBN 9780231203326
Author Julia Kristeva
Format Hardback
Page Count 112
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
