Through the biographical prism: Joseph Frank and Dostoevsky

• Grant number: 12/00031-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: April 28, 2012
• End date: October 27, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Bruno Barretto Gomide
• Grantee: Giuliana Teixeira de Almeida
• Supervisor: Irina Paperno
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 10/13265-4 - Through the biographical prism: Joseph Frank and Dostoevsky, BP.MS

Abstract

Many biographies have been written about Fyodor Dostoevsky, a prominent19th century Russian literature novelist. Among all these titles, Joseph Frank's "Dostoevsky" stands out as a great synthesis of the Russian writer's life and era. Written along three decades, Frank's work recreates the Russian cultural history in the second half of the 19th century and proposes a different interpretation for Dostoevsky's literary works. After this work, Frank has become one of the most important North American's experts in Russian literature and Dostoevsky. This research aims to identify the merits and the problems of this monumental biography, and also compare this work with other biographies by authors as Edward Carr, Stefan Zweig and Henry Troyat among others, written about the thrilling life of Dostoevsky. Finally, the study sets out to investigate the theoretical and methodological problems of the biography genre. Considering the repercussion of "Dostoevsky" for the intellectual community of United States of America, we will also analyze the reception and the critiques of Frank's biography in that country. Since "Dostoevsky" was written along three decades and Joseph Frank has become one of the most important North American's experts in Russian literature, in parallel we will investigate the situation of the last decades of Slavic studies at USA. (AU)