Redemption and the merchant god : Dostoevsky's economy of salvation and antisemitism
Dostoevsky's Russian chauvinism and antisemitism have long posed problems for his readers and critics. This book analyzes Dostoevsky's novels and Diary to show how the author's anxieties about Christianity can help solve the riddle of his antisemitism as well as that of his Russian messianism.
Print Book, English, 2008
Northwestern University Press, Evanston (Ill.), 2008
XIII, 241 p. 24 cm
9780810124394, 0810124394
1014762816
Introduction Speaking with the Devil; Part One; Chapter One "I Am Not an Expert at Lulling to Sleep"; The Struggle between Faith and Doubt in Dostoevsky's Writings; Chapter Two "He Gave His Son"; The Problem of the Crucifixion as Child Sacrifice; Chapter Three Disraeli and the Merchant God; Victims and Villains, Jews and Europe; Chapter Four A Synagogue Mistaken for a Church; Dostoevsky's Demon and the Jews; Part Two; Chapter Five "I Have the Heart of a Lamb"; Roots of the Russian and Jewish Ideas and the Problem of the Crucifixion in Poor Folk; Chapter Six "God Sent Her as a Reward for Our Sufferings"; The Origins of Dostoevsky's Preoccupation with Child Sacrifice in the Dialogue between Time and The Insulted and Injured; Chapter Seven Sources of Dostoevsky's Antisemitism in the Resemblance of Christians and Jews in Notes from the House of the Dead; Chapter Eight "I Don't Want Your Sacrifice"; The Morality of the Son in Crime and Punishment; Chapter Nine From Prince Christ to the Russian Christ; Problems of Resurrection in The Idiot and the Development of Dostoevsky's National Messianism; Chapter Ten "This Is What I Cannot Bear"; The Obliteration of Moral Distinctions through the Crucifixion in Demons; Chapter Eleven "You Can Buy the Whole World"; Zosima's Christian Faith and the Jewish Idea in the Diary of a Writer.