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Greg Ormiston dissertation.pdf (1.13 MB)

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The Prison Worlds of Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov

Ormiston, Gregory
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8868-320X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492685883985888

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures.
It may be unsurprising that in nineteenth-century Russia, under a politically sensitive tsarist regime notorious for sending some of the country’s most famous writers into exile, prison became a conspicuous topic in literature. In the second half of the century, the works of three of Russia’s best realist authors - Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev Tolstoi, and Anton Chekhov – prominently featured prison, and even prisoners as heroes. Nevertheless, critical treatment of these prison-related works tends to isolate them to the context of each individual writer. This dissertation explores the carceral connections between these authors to see how prison, as a common theme, played a larger role in the development of nineteenth-century Russian literature than has previously been recognized. My study focuses especially on how prison influences the creation of the three authors’ literary worlds. Specifically, through close reading and analysis of selected texts, I show how the realists use the time and space of prison to produce the themes and forms of their fiction. Thus prison becomes foundational in the works of Dostoevskii and Chekhov, and revelatory in Tolstoi’s late period. Theoretical support for this analysis comes mainly from Mikhail Bakhtin, whose notion of the “chronotope” aids in the investigation of prison-like settings, and Michel Foucault, who tracks the changing nature of prison and its increasing effect on society leading into the era of the Russian realists. The works of Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov have common origins in the modern penal system Foucault describes, which shifts its focus from the crime to the criminal, and from the body to the soul. The Russian realists, I conclude, engaged with prison in a way that not only drove their own thematic and formal innovations, but also provided a framework for subsequent generations of Russian “prison writers.”
Alexander Burry (Advisor)
Angela Brintlinger (Committee Member)
Helena Goscilo (Committee Member)
265 p.
Literature
Russian literature, Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, Chekhov, prison, Resurrection, Sakhalin, Brothers Karamazov

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ormiston, G. (2017). The Prison Worlds of Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492685883985888

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ormiston, Gregory. The Prison Worlds of Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492685883985888.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ormiston, Gregory. "The Prison Worlds of Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492685883985888

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1492685883985888
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.