Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes, his most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky's oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short stories and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature, his 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, through books by Russian and foreign authors, his mother died in 1837 when he was 15, around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute.
After graduating, he worked as an engineer and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment, he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist and editing several magazines of his own and A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings, he began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he became one of the most read and regarded Russian writers. Dostoevsky was influenced by a wide variety of philosophers and authors including Pushkin, Augustine, Dickens, Lermontov, Poe, Cervantes, Kant, Hegel, Solovyov, Sand and Mickiewicz.
His writings were read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an great number of writers including Russians like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov as well as philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Dostoevsky's parents were part of a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational noble family, its branches including Russian Orthodox Christians, Polish Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Eastern Catholics; the family traced its roots back to a Tatar, Aslan Chelebi-Murza, who in 1389 defected from the Golden Horde and joined the forces of Dmitry Donskoy, the first prince of Muscovy to challenge the Mongol authority in the region, whose descendant, Danilo Irtishch, was ennobled and given lands in the Pinsk region in 1509 for his services under a local prince, his progeny taking the name "Dostoevsky" based on a village there called Dostoïevo. Dostoevsky's immediate ancestors on his mother's side were merchants.
His father, Mikhail Andreevich, was expected to join the clergy but instead ran away from home and broke with the family permanently. In 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky enrolled in Moscow's Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there he was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor, in 1818, he was appointed a senior physician. In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva; the following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. In 1828, when his two sons and Fyodor, were eight and seven he was promoted to collegiate assessor, a position which raised his legal status to that of the nobility and enabled him to acquire a small estate in Darovoye, a town about 150 km from Moscow, where the family spent the summers. Dostoevsky's parents subsequently had six more children: Varvara, Lyubov, Vera and Aleksandra. Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on 11 November 1821, was the second child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevskaya, he was raised in the family home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, in a lower class district on the edges of Moscow.
Dostoevsky encountered the patients, who were at the lower end of the Russian social scale, when playing in the hospital gardens. Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age. From the age of three, he was read heroic sagas, fairy tales and legends by his nanny, Alena Frolovna, an influential figure in his upbringing and love for fictional stories; when he was four his mother used the Bible to teach him to write. His parents introduced him to a wide range of literature, including Russian writers Karamzin and Derzhavin. Although his father's approach to education has been described as strict and harsh, Dostoevsky himself reports that his imagination was brought alive by nightly readings by his parents; some of his childhood experiences found their way into his writings. When a nine-year-old girl had been raped by a drunk, he was asked to fetch his
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a French Renaissance writer, Renaissance humanist and Greek scholar. He has been regarded as a writer of fantasy, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs, his best known work is Pantagruel. Because of his literary power and historical importance, Western literary critics consider him one of the great writers of world literature and among the creators of modern European writing, his literary legacy is such that today, the word Rabelaisian has been coined as a descriptive inspired by his work and life. Merriam-Webster defines the word as describing someone or something, "marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism". No reliable documentation of the place or date of the birth of François Rabelais has survived. While some scholars put the date as early as 1483, he was born in November 1494 near Chinon in the province of Touraine, where his father worked as a lawyer; the estate of La Devinière in Seuilly in the modern-day Indre-et-Loire the writer's birthplace, houses a Rabelais museum.
Rabelais became a novice of the Franciscan order, a friar at Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou, where he studied Greek and Latin as well as science and law becoming known and respected by the humanists of his era, including Guillaume Budé. Harassed due to the directions of his studies and frustrated with the Franciscan order's ban on the study of Greek, Rabelais petitioned Pope Clement VII and gained permission to leave the Franciscans and to enter the Benedictine order at Maillezais in Poitou, where he was more warmly received, he left the monastery to study medicine at the University of Poitiers and at the University of Montpellier. In 1532 he moved to Lyon, one of the intellectual centres of the Renaissance, in 1534 began working as a doctor at the Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, for which he earned 40 livres a year. During his time in Lyon, he edited Latin works for the printer Sebastian Gryphius, wrote a famous admiring letter to Erasmus to accompany the transmission of a Greek manuscript from the printer.
Gryphius published Rabelais' translations & annotations of Hippocrates and Giovanni Manardo. As a physician, he used his spare time to write and publish humorous pamphlets critical of established authority and preoccupied with the educational and monastic mores of the time. In 1532, under the pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier, he published his first book, Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, the first of his Gargantua series; the idea of basing an allegory on the lives of giants came to Rabelais from the folklore legend of les Grandes chroniques du grand et énorme géant Gargantua, which were sold as popular literature at the time in the form of inexpensive pamphlets by colporters and at the fairs of Lyon. Pantagruelisme is an "eat, drink and be merry" philosophy, which led his books into disfavor with the church brought them popular success and the admiration of critics for their focus on the body; this first book, critical of the existing monastic and educational system, contains the first known occurrence in French of the words encyclopédie, progrès and utopie among others.
Despite the book's popularity, both it and the subsequent prequel book about the life and exploits of Pantagruel's father Gargantua were condemned by the "Sorbonne" in 1543 and the Roman Catholic Church in 1545. Rabelais taught medicine at Montpellier in 1534 and again in 1539. In 1537, Rabelais gave an anatomy lesson at Lyon's Hôtel-Dieu using the corpse of a hanged man. In June 1543 Rabelais became a Master of Requests. Between 1545 and 1547 François Rabelais lived in Metz a free imperial city and a republic, to escape the condemnation by the University of Paris. In 1547, he became curate of Saint-Christophe-du-Jambet in Maine and of Meudon near Paris, from which he resigned in January 1553 before his death in Paris in April 1553. With support from members of the prominent du Bellay family, Rabelais received approval from King Francis I to continue to publish his collection. However, after the king's death in 1547, the academic élite frowned upon Rabelais, the French Parlement suspended the sale of his fourth book published in 1552.
Rabelais traveled to Rome with his friend and patient Cardinal Jean du Bellay, lived for a short time in Turin as part of the household of du Bellay's brother, Guillaume. Rabelais spent some time lying low, under periodic threat of being condemned of heresy depending upon the health of his various protectors. Only the protection of du Bellay saved Rabelais after the condemnation of his novel by the Sorbonne. Gargantua and Pantagruel relates his son Pantagruel; the tales are adventurous and erudite and gross, toxic ecumenical and rarely—if ever—solemn for long. The first book, was Pantagruel and the Gargantua mentioned in the Prologue refers not to Rabelais' own work but to storybooks that were being sold at the Lyon fairs in the early 1530s. In the first chapter of the earliest book, Pantagruel's lineage is listed back 60 generations to a giant named Chalbroth; the narrator dismisses the skeptics of the time—who would have thought a giant far too large for Noah's Ark—stating that Hurtaly rode the Ark like a kid on a rocking horse, or like a fat Swiss guy on a cannon.
In the Prologue to Gargantua the narrator addr
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, philosophy, sociology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s. Bakhtin was born in Russia, to an old family of the nobility, his father worked in several cities. For this reason Bakhtin spent his early childhood years in Oryol, in Vilnius, in Odessa, where in 1913 he joined the historical and philological faculty at the local university. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist write: "Odessa... Like Vilnius, was an appropriate setting for a chapter in the life of a man, to become the philosopher of heteroglossia and carnival.
The same sense of fun and irreverence that gave birth to Babel's Rabelaisian gangster or to the tricks and deceptions of Ostap Bender, the picaro created by Ilf and Petrov, left its mark on Bakhtin." He transferred to Petrograd Imperial University to join his brother Nikolai. It is here that Bakhtin was influenced by the classicist F. F. Zelinsky, whose works contain the beginnings of concepts elaborated by Bakhtin. Bakhtin completed his studies in 1918, he moved to a small city in western Russia, where he worked as a schoolteacher for two years. It was at that time; the group consisted of intellectuals with varying interests, but all shared a love for the discussion of literary and political topics. Included in this group were Valentin Voloshinov and P. N. Medvedev, who joined the group in Vitebsk. Vitebsk was “a cultural centre of the region” the perfect place for Bakhtin “and other intellectuals lectures and concerts." German philosophy was the topic talked about most and, from this point forward, Bakhtin considered himself more a philosopher than a literary scholar.
It was in Nevel that Bakhtin worked tirelessly on a large work concerning moral philosophy, never published in its entirety. However, in 1919, a short section of this work was published and given the title "Art and Responsibility"; this piece constitutes Bakhtin's first published work. Bakhtin relocated to Vitebsk in 1920, it was here, in 1921. In 1923, Bakhtin was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a bone disease that led to the amputation of his leg in 1938; this illness rendered him an invalid. In 1924, Bakhtin moved to Leningrad, where he assumed a position at the Historical Institute and provided consulting services for the State Publishing House, it is at this time that Bakhtin decided to share his work with the public, but just before "On the Question of the Methodology of Aesthetics in Written Works" was to be published, the journal in which it was to appear stopped publication. This work was published 51 years later; the repression and misplacement of his manuscripts was something that would plague Bakhtin throughout his career.
In 1929, "Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art", Bakhtin's first major work, was published. It is here. However, just as this book was introduced, on 8 December 1928, right before Voskresenie's 10th anniversary, Bakhtin and a number of others associated with Voskresenie were apprehended by the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, the leaders being sentenced up to ten years in labor camps of Solovki, though after an appeal to consider the state of his health his sentence was commuted to exile to Kazakhstan, where he and his wife spent six years in Kustanai, after which in 1936 they moved to Saransk where he taught at the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute. During the six years he spent working as a book-keeper in the town of Kustanai he wrote several important essays, including "Discourse in the Novel". In 1936, living in Saransk, he became an obscure figure in a provincial college, dropping out of view and teaching only occasionally. In 1937, Bakhtin moved to a town located one hundred kilometers from Moscow.
Here, Bakhtin completed work on a book concerning the 18th-century German novel, subsequently accepted by the Sovetskii Pisatel' Publishing House. However, the only copy of the manuscript disappeared during the upheaval caused by the German invasion. After the amputation of his leg in 1938, Bakhtin's health improved and he became more prolific. In 1940, until the end of World War II, Bakhtin lived in Moscow, where he submitted a dissertation on François Rabelais to the Gorky Institute of World Literature to obtain a postgraduate title, a dissertation that could not be defended until the war ended. In 1946 and 1949, the defense of this dissertation divided the scholars of Moscow into two groups: those official opponents guiding the defense, who accepted the original and unorthodox manuscript, those other professors who were against the manuscript's acceptance; the book's earthy, anarchic topic was the cause of many arguments that ceased only when the government intervened. Bakhtin was denied a higher doctoral degree (Doctor of
Grotesque body
The grotesque body is a concept, or literary trope, put forward by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of François Rabelais' work. The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all, abstract, spiritual and ideal to the material level. Through the use of the grotesque body in his novels, Rabelais related political conflicts to human anatomy. In this way, Rabelais used the concept as "a figure of unruly biological and social exchange", it is by means of this information that Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts: the first is carnival, the second is grotesque realism. Thus, in Rabelais and His World Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body; the Carnival is known as the feast of fools. In today's world, this is better known as Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is a religious celebration where people consume copious amounts of food and wine and have a large party to celebrate; the grotesqueness in the carnival is seen as the abundance and large amount of food consumed by the body.
There is much emphasis put on the mouth. Eating, burping from excess, etc. is all done through the mouth. Rabelais uses the Carnival to refer to politics and critique the world based on human anatomy. In the Italian celebration of Carnival, masks play a major role as many people wear them during the celebration. Many of these masks can be seen as an exaggeration of the grotesque as they feature enlarged facial elements such as an enlarged nose; the Italian celebration of carnival is similar to that of Mardi Gras where food and alcohol are consumed in excess. Both renditions of Carnival are celebrated before the Christian season of Lent, about a 40-day season for people of Christian faith to cleanse themselves and become pure before Easter Sunday. Exaggeration and expressiveness are all key elements of the grotesque style. Certain aspects of the body are referenced; these things include elements of the body that either protrude from the body or a part of the body that can be entered. This is. Therefore, parts of the body that allow the outside world in or allow elements inside the body out, are seen and used as an exaggeration of the grotesque.
In the article, "Absurdity and Hidden Truth: Cunning Intelligence and Grotesque Body Images as Manifestations of the Trickster", Koepping refers back to Bakhtin's statement, "The themes of cursing and of laughter are exclusively a subject of the grotesqueness of the body." Italian satirist Daniele Luttazzi explained: "satire exhibits the grotesque body, dominated by the primary needs to celebrate the victory of life: the social and the corporeal are joyfully joint in something indivisible and beneficial". Bakhtin explained how the grotesque body is a celebration of the cycle of life: the grotesque body is a comic figure of profound ambivalence: its positive meaning is linked to birth and renewal and its negative meaning is linked to death and decay. In Rabelais' epoch "it was appropriate to ridicule the king and clergy, to use dung and urine to degrade, it was the power of the people’s festive-carnival, a way to turn the official spectacle inside-out and upside down, just for a while. With the advent of modernity, the mechanistic overtook the organic, the officialdom no longer came to join in festive-carnival.
The bodily lower stratum of humor dualized from the upper stratum." Before people began to develop literature or art, leaders would sit in their halls surrounded by their warriors amusing themselves by mocking their opponents and enemies. The warriors would laugh at any weakness or defect, either physical or mental, giving nicknames which exaggerated these traits. Soon warriors sought to give a more permanent form to their ridicule, which led to rude depictions on bare rocks, or any other surface, convenient. In the Medieval Grotesque Carnival, emphasis is put on the nether regions of the body as the center and creation of meaning; the spirit rather than coming from above comes from the belly and genitals. Carnival Commedia dell'arte, Vaudeville Gilles Deleuze Heteroglossia Materialism Plautus' Amphitruo Profanity, decency, aesthetic relativism Raven Tales Ribaldry, toilet humour, vulgarism Trickster Clark and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Bakhtin, Mikhail.
Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993; the series in the original French is entitled La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel. Available English translations include The Complete Works of François Rabelais by Donald M. Frame and Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Antoine Motteux. Se Dio avesse voluto che credessimo in sarebbe esistito. Daniele Luttazzi, 15 November 2006, danieleluttazzi.it Paul Allen. "The Bodily Grotesque in Roman Satire: Images of Sterility". Arethusa. 31: 257–283. Doi:10.1353/are.1998.0017. Coh.arizonaedu Christenson, David. "Grotesque Realism in Plautus' "Amphitruo"". The Classical Journal. 96: 243–260. JSTOR 3298322. Boje, David M.. "Grotesque M
