Rather belatedly, I must alert readers to my appearance last week on BBC Radio 3’s Nightwaves programme. As part of a series on ‘the good life’, the programme was devoted to the ambiguous portrayal of goodness – and its spectacular failure – in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. You can listen to me discussing the novel with theologian […]
All posts tagged Dostoevsky
Talking about Dostoevsky on Radio 3
Posted by Sarah Young on September 20, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/09/20/talking-about-dostoevsky-on-radio-3/
Russian prison experience
Last week I participated in a workshop titled ‘Punishment as a Crime? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture’, at Uppsala University’s Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The programme, which is available here, was notable for its wide range of papers and approaches. The imperial, soviet and post-soviet periods were all covered, and […]
Posted by Sarah Young on August 22, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/08/22/russian-prison-experience/
Dostoevsky and the Gulag
I’ve started work on a paper on the depiction of criminals in labour camp writing for a workshop later this summer, and as Dostoevsky is one of my starting points, this has led me to revisit the broader question of the role of recurrent references to him in Gulag literature. This post is not intended […]
Posted by Sarah Young on May 6, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/05/06/dostoevsky-and-the-gulag/
BASEES 2012 highlights
I was quite busy with committee business during the BASEES conference, but did manage to attend a few panels, and want to pick out a few highlights from what everyone I spoke to agreed was a very stimulating and enjoyable weekend. A Monday morning panel on Gulag literature may not be everybody’s idea of fun, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on April 2, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/04/02/basees-2012-highlights/
Four short links: intergalactic zombie agriculture!
… or Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov’s Philosophy of the Common Task. One comes across many extraordinary figures and ideas in Russian literature and intellectual history, but Fedorov stands out even in this exalted company. Fedorov’s ‘common task’, to which all human activity should be directed, was achieving immortality for all, including the dead, who would thereby […]
Posted by Sarah Young on February 15, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/02/15/four-short-links-intergalactic-zombie-agriculture/
Mapping Gogol: Methodology
As part of our work to expand Mapping St Petersburg and develop the idea of experimenting with literary cartography, we have produced two maps visualizing the spatial arrangement of Gogol’s Peterburg Tales. The first marks all the place references in the five stories, Nevskii prospekt, The Portrait, The Diary of a Madman, The Nose and The Overcoat, while the second differentiates between the places where the action occurs, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on January 29, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/01/29/mapping-gogol-methodology/
Dostoevsky in English
I haven’t posted anything for a while, but having got over pre-Christmas flu, festivities, and catching up with work after both, I am now back in the saddle. I decided to post a list of links to English translations of Dostoevsky’s works, partly because someone suggested it would useful, partly to have an overview what’s […]
Posted by Sarah Young on January 16, 2012
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/01/16/dostoevsky-in-english/
Top ten letters in Russian literature
Letters play a significant role in some of my favourite works of Russian literature, and a couple in particular have been very much on my mind lately. So here is my top ten, which manages to encompass everything from the absurd to the tragic. Apologies for the plot spoilers (especially in entries 10, 7 and […]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 15, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/12/15/top-ten-letters-in-russian-literature/
Life and Fate on the BBC
I’m still recovering from a couple of memorable days at St Peter’s College Oxford, where the BBC’s event to celebrate the Radio 4 adaptation of Vasily Grossman’s vast and still under-appreciated novel Life and Fate was followed by an interdisciplinary conference on Grossman. I’m still gathering my thoughts on the latter, so I’ll save that […]
Posted by Sarah Young on September 12, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/09/12/life-and-fate-on-the-bbc/
Doroshevich on Sakhalin
I had other plans yesterday, but was feeling far too tired and depressed to concentrate on the writing I was supposed to be doing. So, to take my mind off present-day violent criminality at home, I started thinking about violent criminality more than a hundred years ago on the other side of the world… I recently […]
Posted by Sarah Young on August 10, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/08/10/doroshevich-on-sakhalin/