The Idiot (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- First Published: 1868
- Type of Work: Philosophical Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Love or romance, Murder or homicide, Nineteenth century, Jealousy, envy, or resentment, Blackmail, Greed, Gossip, Russia or Russian people, Princes or princesses, Epilepsy
- Locales: St. Petersburg, Russia
Prince Lef Myshkin, the protagonist, is an impoverished nobleman lately released from a Swiss sanatorium where he was treated for epilepsy. He is so free of malice and so unfailingly kind that he inspires both love and contempt in his new friends in St. Petersburg. The most important of these are Parfen Rogozhin, a man of undisciplined passions, and Natasya Filipovna, a neurotic and helpless young person, generally believed to be a “kept woman.”
Myshkin is drawn to Natasya because he recognizes both her essential innocence and her capacity for suffering. He proposes to her at...
[The entire page is 517 words long]
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