A fallible narrator and an inscrutable object: desire as structure in Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband.

This article argues that one of the means by which Dostoevsky achieves polyphony in the limited point-of-view narration of The Eternal Husband (1870) is through the tension between the character Velchaninov's overt aversion and his subterranean attraction to Trusotsky, the cuckold of the title. Whil...

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Publicado en:Studies in East European Thought Vol. 77; no. 5; pp. 921 - 934
Autor principal: Phillips, James
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Oct2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: A fallible narrator and an inscrutable object: desire as structure in Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband.
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        au: Phillips, James
        affil: https://ror.org/03r8z3t63 School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, 2052, Sydney, NSW, Australia
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        Desire
        Homosexuality
        Fictional characters
        Philosophical literature
        Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881
        Narration
        Literature
        Pluralism
        Narrators
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        subj:
          Desire
          Homosexuality
          Fictional characters
          Philosophical literature
          Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881
          Narration
          Literature
          Pluralism
          Narrators
      keyword:
        Ambivalence
        Dostoevsky
        Polyphony
        Repression
        Same-sex attraction
        The Eternal Husband
      ab: This article argues that one of the means by which Dostoevsky achieves polyphony in the limited point-of-view narration of The Eternal Husband (1870) is through the tension between the character Velchaninov's overt aversion and his subterranean attraction to Trusotsky, the cuckold of the title. While Trusotsky is more forthright in expressing his love for Velchaninov and has thus previously raised the question of homosexuality for commentators on Dostoevsky's novella, the text also provides sufficient clues to infer that Velchaninov is erotically responsive. The subtlety of Dostoevsky's depiction of this responsiveness is crucial to the polyphonic effect he secures for the work. The narration, which proceeds from Velchaninov's perspective, imbricates the discrete layers of what is thought, what is said and what is done without being openly thought. The monological principle of composition, to which the limited point-of-view narrative format generically predisposes many earlier writers but whose alienness to Dostoevsky is Bakhtin's central contention, thereby fails to assert itself in the novella.
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