Main description:

In Dostoevsky as Suicidologist, Amy D. Ronner illustrates how self-homicide in Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction prefigures Emile Durkheim's etiology in Suicide as well as theories of other prominent suicidologists. This book not only fills a lacuna in Dostoevsky scholarship, but provides fresh readings of Dostoevsky's major works, including Notes from The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. Ronner provides an exegesis of how Dostoevsky's implicit awareness of fatalistic, altruistic, egoistic, and anomic modes of self-destruction helped shape not only his philosophy, but also his craft as a writer. In this study, Ronner contributes to the field of suicidology by anatomizing both self-destructive behavior and suicidal ideation while offering ways to think about prevention. But most expansively, Ronner tackles the formidable task of forging a ligature between artistic creation and the pluripresent social fact of self-annihilation.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Introduction: Suicide as a Social Fact

Chapter 2: Fatalistic Convulsions in Notes From the House of the Dead

Chapter 3: Egoistic Self-Deceminantion in Crime and Punishment and The Idiot

Chapter 4: Anomy in Demons and The Brothers Karamazov

Chapter 5: Conclusion: The Antonymous Creative Process

Bibliography

Index

About the Author