Archetypes from Underground
Notes on the Dostoevskian Self
La description
Uncovers archetypal imagery in Dostoevsky’s works ad argues that archetypes bring a new dimension to our understanding and appreciation of his works.
In this interdisciplinary study, Harrison analyzes selected texts in light of fresh research in Dostoevsky studies, cultural history, comparative mythology, and depth psychology. He argues that one of Dostoevsky’s chief concerns is the crisis of modernity, and that he dramatizes the conflicts of the modern self by depicting the dynamic, transformative nature of the psyche. This work is the first sustained analysis of Dostoevsky’s work in light of archetypes, framing a topic that calls for further investigation. Archetypes illumine the author’s ideas about Russian national identity and its faith traditions and help us redefine our understanding of Russian realism and the prominent place Dostoevsky occupies within it.
Reviews
Readers are often asked to choose between two filters, the secular and the religious, in their quest for Dostoevsky's paradoxical sense of personality: socially conditioned but not schematic, rebellious but not free. Lonny Harrison suggests that we work instead with an expanded Jungian concept of archetype, with its unconscious, its shadow, its ego-transcendence and rebirth. The result is a fascinating hypothesis about the Dostoevskian psyche, poised between the ruins of European positivism and the potentials of cosmic myth.
- Caryl Emerson, Princeton University, 2016 March