History in the Life and Work of F. M. Dostoevsky

Abstract

The article is devoted to the role of history in the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky. The writer studied world and Russian history throughout his life. The work notes what historical works Dostoevsky read and especially valued, and what books on history were in his home library. The article attempts to determine how Dostoevsky understood history, how he saw the role of the individual in history, and how he expressed it in his works. The writer’s first literary experiences in the early 1840s were already associated with an attempt to write essays on historical topics. And then, he defined many of his works by the genre as “chronicle” or “annals,” which allows them to be formally classified as “historical literature” in a broad sense. In Dostoevsky’s works, the characters not only enthusiastically study and teach history but also actively compose historical works of a scientific and artistic nature. The author of the article substantiates the idea that the writer and his characters’ appeal to history lies at the basis of Dostoevsky’s poetics and often creates a secondary plot in his works, giving the depicted scenes and characters additional historical and cultural volume.

Keywords

• f. m. dostoevsky
• literary theory
• history
• philosophy of history
• napoleonic myth
• napoleon
• schlosser
• the role of personality in history