Dostoevsky at school: stereotypes and their history

Abstract

The article discusses stereotypes associated with Dostoevsky in modern textbooks and textbooks: pointing out contradictions in the writer's worldview, one-sided approach to studying his work, identifying the position of the author and the hero, simplifying the genre originality of his novels. The work shows the history of the emergence of these stereotypes in the Soviet textbooks. The judgment of a contradiction in Dostoevsky’s worldview appeared during the lifetime of the writer in revolutionary-democratic criticism, in the 1920s it was promoted by A. V. Lunacharsky, in the 1940s - V. Ermilov. V. G. Belinsky called the novel The Poor People “the first social novel,” and since then, in a democratic criticism of Dostoevsky’s novels of intercourse with the traditions of the “natural school,” refer mainly to the social problems of the works. In the controversy with Dostoevsky, the revolutionary-democratic critic allowed the “transition to the personality” of the writer, to identify the author with his heroes. Currently in the textbooks of T. F. Kurdyumovoy, V. I. Korovin is dominated by the analysis of social problems in the works of Dostoevsky. In some modern textbooks, an extremely subjective attitude towards Dostoevsky by V. Nabokov, is broadcast, the data of quasi-science (astrology) are used. It is necessary to identify in the modern educational literature about Dostoevsky the used methodologies, the collection of educational “maps” for such sources and, finally, to determine the leading strategy and new approaches to understanding the ideological and artistic heritage of Dostoevsky. Among them is the creation of a method for complex text analysis taking into account the latest research in the field of literary studies, linguistics and communication theory.