Two Egoists (Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted and Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the reception of Charles Dickens by Dostoevsky, who was an ardent reader of Dickens. The author of the article shows that Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted clearly demonstrates the influence not only of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop but also of his next, less popular, novel Barnaby Rudge (1841) which was published in Russian translation in the “Otechestvennye Zapiski” in 1842. The article reveals some similarities of the plot and, more importantly, between the characters of the two novels: Count Volkovsky and Sir Chester, who personify the type of antiromantic egoists which will be developed with more depth in Dostoevsky’s later works.

Keywords

• charles dickens
• barnaby rudge
• fedor dostoevsky
• humiliated and insulted
• egoists