Joseph Frank's continuing biography of Dostoevsky is by now recognized
as one of the major achievements of this century in this form, and
perhaps the best work on the author in any language. During the course
of this long-range effort, Frank has also produced articles,
introductions, and occasional pieces that arise from his acute awareness
of how Western ideas are changed, transformed, and given new meanings
and implications when they are reflected through the Russian prism. It
is this interaction between Russia and the West that has fascinated
Frank for many years and that provides the focus for these essays.
Assembled here are twenty contributions dealing with the culture that
generated the great novels of Dostoevsky and the criticism of the
Russian formalists of the early twentieth century, whose perceptions
still shape our views of Russian and much of world literature. Included
are evaluations of books by Jakobson and Bakhtin, as well as of books
about the development of Russian formalist criticism and thought. At the
center are pieces on Dostoevsky and his milieu, as well as on his
influence on world literature. Among them are Frank's New Criterion
piece on Ralph Ellison's debt to Dostoevsky and a critical examination
of the world-famous article by Freud on the Russian master. Gathered
together, these essays reveal one of the powerful critical intelligences
of our time, considering issues that arise from his study of Dostoevsky
but which extend well beyond the time and place of that novelist alone.
