Article

Name: Reality as Project: Towards a Poetic and Political Epistemology of the Romantic World (“What is to be Done?” by N. G. Chernyshevsky and “The Demons” by F. M. Dostoevsky)

Authors: Anatoly V. Korchinsky

Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that Dostoevsky, in “The Demons”, attempts to challenge the “nihilistic” worldview (of which author of the novel “What Is To Be Done?” is the greatest representative in his view) not on the level of separate ideas and images, or even their system, but on the narrative construction of the novel reality itself. From this perspective, the task of both novels is not the portrayal of a present reality and an ideal opposed to it, but an experimental description of how this reality can be changed, directing – in one case – towards a better future or – in the other case – towards catastrophe. But what is interesting, above all, is not how this task is resolved in the plot of these novels ("new people" want to remake the world – what will come of it?), but rather the way this task transforms the narrative structure and the metafictional structure of both works.

Keywords: reality, reality, narrative, diegetic world, authenticity, Russian novel, realism, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, literary epistemology

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