Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground
Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground While Dostoevsky's relation to religion is well-trod ground, there exists no comprehensive study of Dostoevsky and Catholicism. Previous commentators have…
Specifikacia Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground
Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground
While Dostoevsky's relation to religion is well-trod ground, there exists no comprehensive study of Dostoevsky and Catholicism. Previous commentators have traced a wide-ranging hostility in Dostoevsky's understanding of Catholicism to his Slavophilism. Elizabeth Blake's ambitious and learned Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground fills this glaring omission in the scholarship.
Her close reading demonstrates that he is repelled and fascinated by Catholicism in all its medieval, Reformation, and modern manifestations. Blake depicts a far more nuanced picture. Dostoevsky saw in Catholicism not just an inspirational source for the Grand Inquisitor but a political force, an ideological wellspring, a unique mode of intellectual inquiry, and a source of cultural production.
Blake's insightful textual analysis is accompanied by an equally penetrating analysis of nineteenth-century