Dostoyevsky, or the Flood of Language

Growing up in Bulgaria, Julia Kristeva was warned by her father not to read Dostoyevsky. "Of course, and as usual," she recalls, "I disobeyed paternal orders and plunged into Dosto. Dazzled, overwhelmed, engulfed." Kristeva would go on to become one of the most important figures in European intellectual life--and she would return over and over again to Dostoyevsky, still haunted and enraptured by the force of his writing.

In this book, Kristeva embarks on a wide-ranging and stimulating inquiry into Dostoyevsky's work and the profound ways it has influenced her own thinking. Reading across his major novels and shorter works, Kristeva offers incandescent insights into the potent themes that draw her back to the Russian master: God, otherness, violence, eroticism, the mother, the father, language itself. Both personal and erudite, the book intermingles Kristeva's analysis with her recollections of Dostoyevsky's significance in different intellectual moments--the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the Thaw-era Eastern Bloc, the debates over poststructuralism in 1960s France, and whether it could be said that "everything is permitted" today. Brilliant and vivid, this is an essential book for admirers of both Kristeva and Dostoyevsky. It also features an illuminating foreword by Rowan Williams that reflects on the significance of Kristeva's reading of Dostoyevsky for his own understanding of religious writing.

Author: Julia Kristeva
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 12/28/2021
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.70w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780231203326


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/11/2021
Choice 08/01/2022

About the Author
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her most recent Columbia University Press book is Passions of Our Time (2019).

Jody Gladding is a poet who has translated dozens of works from French, including Kristeva's The Severed Head: Capital Visions (Columbia, 2014).

Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is the author of many books, including Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (2008).