dc.contributor.author | Harrison, Lonny | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-01-24T19:15:37Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-01-24T19:15:37Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2008 | |
dc.identifier.isbn | 978-0-494-39931-6 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10106/27108 | |
dc.description | A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto | en_US |
dc.description.abstract | This dissertation investigates the problem of duality as it relates to the moral situation of
the protagonist of F. M. Dostoevsky's novella Dvoinik (The Double, 1846). Bearing the
cultural and literary heritage as well as contemporary social realities of mid-nineteenth
century Russia steadily in mind, I analyse the duality motif in Dvoinik in terms of the
protagonist's self-consciousness [samosoznanie] and moral perceptions. In particular, the
moral ideas that underpin his self-definitions are products of what I refer to as moral
selfawareness. In the course of my analysis, I interrogate the modulations of moral reasoning
in the mind of the protagonist to show how his perceptions and discourse create moral
categories, which in turn motivate his contradictory self-definitions and behaviours.
In view of this conflict, I argue that the protagonist's will to succeed in the civil
bureaucratic order of nineteenth-century Petersburg is incompatible with his implicit need
to find moral rectitude. Ego-driven motivations provide contrapuntal tensions to
exacerbate his experience of inner division. At the same time, his view of himself as a
moral being is obscured by mystified understandings of 'honour' and 'chivalry,' which
he has adapted from popular lore and mimicry of the discursive conventions of privileged
society. Where social humanism and philosophical Idealism inform the moral issues
under examination, their projections through the paired lenses of ego psychology and
myth ultimately show dual consciousness to hinge on the problem of moral selfawareness.
Finally, with reference to Dostoevsky's notebook drafts, personal correspondence
and literary journalism, I examine the author's plans for revision of Dvoinik in the early
1860s. I view these developments as evidence of the crystallization of Dostoevsky's idea
of the 'underground type,' a term he applied to the hero of Dvoinik as prototype after
recasting the role in Zapiski iz podpol'ia (Notes from Underground, 1864). In my
conclusion, the protagonist of the latter work exhibits greater conscious understanding of
the tensions between ego motivations and innate strivings for moral truth; yet he fails, in
the end, to overcome the dualistic divide between the rational mind and the transrational
pursuit of higher spiritual meaning and purpose. | |
dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
dc.publisher | University of Toronto | en_US |
dc.rights | © Copyright by Lonny Roy Harrison 2008 | en_US |
dc.subject | Protagonists (Persons) in literature | en_US |
dc.subject | Literature and morals | en_US |
dc.subject | Russian literature | en_US |
dc.subject | Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881 | en_US |
dc.title | Duality and the Problem of Moral Self-Awareness In Dostoevsky's Dvoinik (The Double) | en_US |
dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
dc.identifier.externalLink | https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/81364 | |