Apostate of the Natural School: Dostoevsky's Narrative of Cognitive 'Truth' in The Double

Following in the tradition of downtrodden "small heroes" of the civil service class, notably Aleksandr Pushkin's Evgeny from The Bronze Horseman (Mednyi vsadnik, 1833), Nikolai Gogol's Akaky Akakievich of "The Overcoat" (Shinel', 1842) and Dostoevsky's own Mak...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:South Central Review 2017-04, Vol.34 (1), p.1-31
Main Author: Harrison, Lonny
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognition
Cognitive science
Consciousness
Gogol, Nikolai Vasilyevich (1809-1852)
Idealism
Narratives
Novels
Ontology
Realism
Russian literature
Science
Trends
Truth
Writers
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Following in the tradition of downtrodden "small heroes" of the civil service class, notably Aleksandr Pushkin's Evgeny from The Bronze Horseman (Mednyi vsadnik, 1833), Nikolai Gogol's Akaky Akakievich of "The Overcoat" (Shinel', 1842) and Dostoevsky's own Makar Devushkin in Poor Folk, The Double's protagonist Mr. Golyadkin is an offshoot of the same genealogy, if, perhaps, a greater evolved one. "4 Further references to Lisa Zunshine and Alan Palmer on the dialogue between cognitive science and literary studies help to show how narrative strategies can be "built around the narratives' exaggerated engagement of our metarepresentational capacity," which refers to, "our tendency to keep track of who thought, wanted, and felt what and when" What is relevant to my study of The Double is how minds are presented in the text, particularly, in this case, how the protagonist's experience of cognitive dissonance is conveyed. [...]recent criticism which disambiguates the novel's function as a repository of truth helps to explain Mr. Golyadkin's cognitive crisis while bringing us deeper into engagement with Dostoevsky's realism.
ISSN:0743-6831
1549-3377
1549-3377
0038-321X
DOI:10.1353/scr.2017.0000