The Reflection of XIX Century Olfactory Culture in the Works of F.M. Dostoevsky. The Smell of the City on the Example of the Novel Crime and Punishment

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Author: Olga A. Dekhanova
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Doctor of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Moscow).

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Dekhanova O.A. The Reflection of XIX Century Olfactory Culture in the Works of F.M. Dostoevsky. The Smell of the City on the Example of the Novel Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky and World Culture, Philological journal, 2020, No. 3(11), pp. 68-90.
Issue: 2020 no. 3 (11)
Department: POETICS. CONTEXT
Pages: 68-90
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2020-3-68-90
UDK: 821.16.1+94
BBK: 83+83.3(2=411.2)+63.3
Keywords: Dostoevsky, smells of the city, urban culture, olfactory culture, Crime and Punishment
Abstract: The article is dedicated to the study of the smells of the city in the novel Crime and Punishment. The sense of smell, as well as vision or hearing, can transmit a significant amount of information. Being both a biological process and a cultural-historical phenomenon, smells reflect not only the immediate olfactory sensations and everyday reality, but also cause a number of cultural associations and emotional images. The historical meanings of smells that are specific to a particular culture are fixed in the public consciousness as evaluative categories for defining the widest range of concepts: “good – bad”, “useful – harmful”, “your own – stranger”, and so on. This property allows odors to be an important element of social relations and perform communicative functions. The communicative properties of smells are used in fiction for historical and geographical identification of the place of events, for characterization of characters, for creating the necessary atmosphere, for expressing the author’s position on a particular issue. To study the functions of smell in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, the process of medicalization that took place in Russian urban culture in the second half of the XIX century is of no small importance. Popularization of scientific discoveries and dissemination of medical recommendations determined a number of important criteria for assessing the quality of life and formed the sanitary and hygienic standards for everyday life. The formation of household standards has led to a change in the social meaning of smells. This is reflected in the works of both F.M. Dostoevsky and his contemporaries. The article traces how everyday smells inherent in a particular social environment are extrapolated from the physical to the spiritual level.

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