Explores Dostoevsky’s works through the lens of Russian and Western novel theory. Theorists include: Viacheslav Ivanov, Georg Lukacs and Mikhail Bakhtin. Topics include: genre, history and modernity; the novelistic narrator; novelistic plot; novelistic narrative; time and space; the generic history and prehistory of the novel; the novel and the self; the novel’s relation to the present; novelistic subgenres including the Bildungsroman; the novel’s simultaneous status as fragment and totality; and the particular and the universal in novelistic representation. Taught in English, readings in either Russian or English.