Cyrus of Persia and Lewes’ Physiology in the Novel Crime and Punishment

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Author: Tatiana A. Kasatkina
Information about the author:

DSc in Philology, Director of Research, Head of the Research Centre “Dostoevsky and World Culture,” A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0875-067X

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For citation:

Kasatkina, T.A. “Cyrus of Persia and Lewes’ Physiology in the Novel Crime and Punishment.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 4 (24), 2023, pp. 93–122. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2023-4-93-128
Received: 18 Nov. 2023
Published: 25 Dec. 2022
Issue: 2023 no. 4 (24)
Department: HERMENEUTICS. SLOW READING
Pages: 93-128
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2023-4-93-128
EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/SVMHOW
UDK: 821.161.1.0
BBK: 83.3
Keywords: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, George Henry Lewes, Physiology of Common Life, physiology as philosophy, Cyrus of Persia, S.N. Smaragdov, Ivan Kuz’mich Kaidanov, text books on Ancient history in the 19th century.
Abstract: The article is devoted to the significant presence in Crime and Punishment of George Henry Lewes’ Physiology of Common Life, the only book explicitly mentioned by Marmeladov among what constituted his daughter Sonya’s “education,” and to the paired message that Sonia’s historical education ended with Cyrus of Persia. A suggestion is made as to which history textbook Marmeladov used to tutor Sonya. Physiology of Common Life (as well as the figure of Cyrus of Persia) is examined in terms of what philosophy it may have engendered or reinforced in the minds of the character and the reader. The extended table of contents of the Physiology is also provided, in order to offer a partial insight into the character of the book that differs from the insight that scholars and commentators of Dostoevsky’s novel in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have drawn from reviews of it, published shortly after the translation came out, as well as from reviews of Crime and Punishment that mention Lewes’ book.

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