Join David Montgomery, SLE alum and PhD in Slavic Literatures for a discussion of Doestoevky's Notes from Underground (1864).

The second half of the 19th century is often portrayed as a time of Progress and optimism in European culture.  What then provoked or inspired Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to create a work of such spectacular spitefulness and gloom as his famous NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND?  Is this a work expressing despair or defiance?  How does the consciousness of the narrator and, even more, the structure of the work represent a commentary and response to Dostoevsky’s (and Russia’s) cultural and literary politics of the time?  How do we read the text as a stand-alone cultural artifact or as a polemic set in a very specific set of historical moments?  (And by the way, speaking more generally of Russian literature – What are “loose, baggy monsters?”) Join us as we address these and other questions.