Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Capek's Hordubal and Dostoevsky's The Double: Madness and Free-indirect Discourse

Capek's Hordubal and Dostoevsky's The Double: Madness and Free-indirect Discourse ˇ ROM JOSEPH CONRAD to Vladimir Nabokov to Karel C apek, great writers (often too close to the Russian border for comfort) have censured Dostoevsky for the excess, hysteria and sentimentalism of his work. The influence of the Russian novelist upon these later writers, however, is often quite apparent in their works, and it betrays an undeniable fascination with Dostoevsky’s own particular genius. This essay examines such a claim on the basis of a psychological and narrative comparison of Dostoevsky’s early novel ˇ The Double (1846) with the first part of Karel Capek’s novel Hordubal, the first work of what is generally considered his masterpiece in the novel genre, the trilogy Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life.1 From a narrative standpoint, the two novels are quite different: Dostoevsky’s story is told from a thirdˇ person external viewpoint, while Capek’s is a first-person internal monologue. On the other hand, both of these works are studies in schizophrenia; in each, the reader witnesses the gradual disintegration of a consciousness at war with itself. In addition, each elicits sympathy for its protagonist in remarkably similar ways. The aim of this comparative investigation is twofold. First, by comparing the methods of psychological http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Capek's Hordubal and Dostoevsky's The Double: Madness and Free-indirect Discourse

Comparative Literature , Volume 52 (1) – Jan 1, 2000

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/capek-s-hordubal-and-dostoevsky-s-the-double-madness-and-free-indirect-YIJkp3eEwC

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2000 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-52-1-53
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

ˇ ROM JOSEPH CONRAD to Vladimir Nabokov to Karel C apek, great writers (often too close to the Russian border for comfort) have censured Dostoevsky for the excess, hysteria and sentimentalism of his work. The influence of the Russian novelist upon these later writers, however, is often quite apparent in their works, and it betrays an undeniable fascination with Dostoevsky’s own particular genius. This essay examines such a claim on the basis of a psychological and narrative comparison of Dostoevsky’s early novel ˇ The Double (1846) with the first part of Karel Capek’s novel Hordubal, the first work of what is generally considered his masterpiece in the novel genre, the trilogy Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life.1 From a narrative standpoint, the two novels are quite different: Dostoevsky’s story is told from a thirdˇ person external viewpoint, while Capek’s is a first-person internal monologue. On the other hand, both of these works are studies in schizophrenia; in each, the reader witnesses the gradual disintegration of a consciousness at war with itself. In addition, each elicits sympathy for its protagonist in remarkably similar ways. The aim of this comparative investigation is twofold. First, by comparing the methods of psychological

Journal

Comparative LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2000

There are no references for this article.