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dc.contributor.authorHarrison, Lonnyen_US
dc.date.accessioned2016-06-28T21:34:01Zen_US
dc.date.available2016-06-28T21:34:01Zen_US
dc.date.issuedFall 2013en_US
dc.identifier.citationPublished in Slavic and East European Journal 57.3:388-402, 2013en_US
dc.identifier.issn0037-6752en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10106/25745en_US
dc.description.abstractThis paper responds to recently debated questions of “reading Dostoevsky religiously” by investigating themes of personal transformation and ego transcendence in his works. They are seen as the writer’s chief response to the crisis of modernity. Contrary to conventional wisdom that sees a uniquely Russian derivation of his religious ideas, recent studies argue that motifs of Eastern Orthodoxy are occasional, and mostly peripheral in his novels. The present essay concurs that religious ideas in Dostoevsky have a syncretic foundation, and argues that his religious themes center on the idea of authentic self, elements of which emanate from sources familiar to Dostoevsky in syncretic philosophy of German Romanticism and Neoplatonism. Instances of visionary experience, epiphany, and personal insight in Dostoevsky’s narratives posit the reality of transcendent awareness where authentic self is aligned with primary consciousness beyond the ego or apparent self. Prince Myshkin, Elder Zosima, and Alyosha Karamazov are discussed as examples of inwardly illumined characters, who typify embodiments of the authentic self revealed by insight of a numinous quality. These works and selected nonfiction writings are cited to show that the focal point of Dostoevsky’s critique of modern secular reason and so-called rational egoism is the pre-modern idea that authentic self is revealed by a moral and aesthetic vision emanating from a transcendent order of being.en_US
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherAmerican Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languagesen_US
dc.subjectPersonal transformationen_US
dc.subjectEgo transcendenceen_US
dc.subjectDostoevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881en_US
dc.titleThe Numinous Experience of Ego Transcendence in Dostoevskyen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of Modern Languages, The University of Texas at Arlingtonen_US
dc.identifier.externalLinkhttps://www.uta.edu/profiles/lonny-harrisonen_US
dc.identifier.externalLinkDescriptionLink to Research Profileen_US


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