The parody of the novel of formation in The adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Grant number: 19/18062-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2019
• End date: October 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal Investigator: Maria de Fátima Bianchi
• Grantee: Joaquim Ferreira Mendes Neto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Among Dostoevsky's so-called great novels is The Adolescent, a work of his artistic maturity. In his notes it is possible to identify the genesis of many ideas that would develop and even be modified to compose the novel. But the idea of the formation of the character Arkadi Dolgorúki, protagonist and narrator of the novel, already appeared in his notes in the form of the motive of the affirmation of the bourgeois path of development (CB25@645=85 1C@6C07=>3> ?CB8 @0728B8O). At that time, Russia was undergoing profound economic changes, with the abolition of the 1861 bondage regime. Arkady Dolgoruky, protagonist and narrator of The Adolescent, carries these changes in the desire to put into practice his idea of becoming a Rothschild. To do so, he interrupts his formation, thus breaking with the traditional aesthetics of the formation novel. When we place The Adolescent (1875) in the tradition of the novel of formation (Bildungsroman), it is possible to perceive the difference that it carries in relation to the "minimum canon", the paradigm of the genre. Meister seeks his formation through art and theater, not wealth as Arkady Dolgoruky does. This research aims precisely to analyze how the parodic counterpoint of some recurrent motives of the novel of formation in this work of Dostoevsky is formed.