LIT 212R Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 May 2018
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• Individualism:
➢ EX’s of romantic individualism taken to extremes:
o Byron in literature
o Beethoven in music
➢ Most influential exemplar of individualism for 19th century was not a
creative artist at all, but a military man:
o Napoleon Bonaparte:
▪ Rose to head of France.
▪ Led army through series of triumphs through Europe.
▪ Built a brief, but influential Empire.
▪ Created new styles, tastes, & even laws w/ disregard for public
opinion.
▪ Both loved & hated.
▪ 50 yrs. after his death, still stimulating authors like Dostoyevsky:
❖ Saw in him ultimate corrosive force.
❖ Celebrated individual striving & freedom at expense of
responsibility & tradition.
➢ Products of romantic celebration of the individual at the expense of society
and tradition:
o Modern fascination w/ self-definition & self-invention.
o Notion that adolescence is naturally a time of rebellion in which one
"finds oneself”.
o Idea that best path is through individual choices.
o Idea that gov’t exists to serve individuals who have created it.
• Nature:
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