Fyodor Dostoevsky: When Beauty Saves the World(Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

This volume offers a philosophical and literary exploration of Dostoevsky’s humanism, with a particular focus on his ethical and aesthetic reflections on human nature. Rather than approaching Dostoevsky through the lens of national character or the so-called "Russian spirit," this book engages in a sustained dialogue with his work to illuminate the moral and psychological complexities of the human soul. Emphasizing the intimate and often unsettling terrain of interior life, the author contends that Dostoevsky’s literature invites readers to confront their own beliefs, values, and existential commitments. Structured as a series of interlinked essays, the book reads selected Dostoevskian texts through a comparative framework, acknowledging both the richness of his literary output and the vast body of critical commentary surrounding it. The approach is intentionally conversational rather than conclusive, welcoming ambiguity, contradiction, and unresolved tensions. In this spirit, the volume traces Dostoevsky’s pursuit of the sublime—where darkness and beauty coexist in the restless drama of human consciousness.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. The Underground Man in El Amor Brujo Chapter 2. Life on the Threshold of Modernism Chapter 3. Prisoners of Life Chapter 4. If God Does Not Exist Chapter 5. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: Prophet or Madman? Chapter 6. Crime and Punishment: A Case for Agape Chapter 7. A Love That Kills: The Idiot Epilogue

About the Author :
Alberto Castelli is Professor of Humanities at Hainan University, China.

Review :
"Alberto Castelli’s study of Dostoevsky, as powerful as it is insightful, guides us down into the depths of Dostoevsky’s vision of the human condition. Good, evil, choice, God, self-identity, redemption, the darker recesses of human psychology, and the struggles of the soul all weave together here as Castelli intricately interprets and articulates Dostoevsky’s message. Castelli, a brilliant reader of philosophical literature, is here determined to show how literature possesses the capacity to reveal what he calls “the intimacy of the soul”, and to bring to light why this “dark abyss is capable of immense beauty.” Throughout this volume we encounter existentialist themes, the Underground Man as a prisoner of his own imagination, Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard in a contrapuntal dialogue, the autobiographical connections in Dostoevsky’s writings, the idea of the internal double, and the meaning-shaping political interconnections in Dostoevsky’s thought. An absorbing study of deep human significance." --Garry L. Hagberg, Author of Living in Words: Literature, Autobiographical Language, and the Composition of Selfhood