Gary Rosenshield offers a new interpretation of Dostoevsky's greatest novel, "The Brothers Karamazov." He explores Dostoevsky's critique and exploitation of the jury trial for his own ideological agenda, both in his journalism and his fiction, contextualizing his portrayal of trials and trial participants (lawyers, jurors, defendants, judges) in the political, social, and ideological milieu of his time. Further, the author presents Dostoevsky's critique in terms of the main notions of the critical legal studies movement in the United States, showing how, over one hundred and twenty years ago, Dostoevsky explicitly dealt with the same problems that the law-and-literature movement has been confronting over the past two decades. This book should appeal to anyone with an interest in Russian literature, Russian history and culture, legal studies, law and literature, narratology, or metafiction and literary theory.

Napoleon today is still a figure who fascinates both his admirers and detractors because of his seminal role in European history at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, straddling the French Revolution and the enormous empire that he fashioned through military conquest. Napoleon in the Russian Imaginary focuses on the response of Russia's greatest writers-poets, novelists, critics, and historians-to the idea of "Great Man" as an agent of transformational change as it manifests itself in the person and career of Napoleon. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and his subsequent exile to St. Helena, in much of Europe a re-evaluation of Napoleon's person, stature, and historical significance occurred, as thinkers and writers witnessed the gradual reestablishment of repressive regimes throughout Europe. This re-evaluation in Russia would have to wait until Napoleon's death in 1821, but when it came to pass, it continued to occupy the imagination of Russia's greatest writers for over 130 years. Although Napoleon's invasion of Russia and subsequent defeat had a profound effect on Russian culture and Russian history, for Russian writers what was most important was the universal significance of Napoleon's desire for world conquest and the idea of unbridled ambition which he embodied. Russian writers saw this, for good or ill, as potentially determining the spiritual and moral fate of future generations. What is particularly fascinating is their attempt to confront each other about this idea in a creative dialogue, with each succeeding writer addressing himself and responding to his predecessor and predecessors.

It has been said that all great literature is about suffering. But before the twentieth century, physical pain, one of the most primal forms of human suffering, has rarely been represented on the stage and in fiction. But when it is foregrounded in works of literature, it is not only the most dramatic way of representing human suffering, it is also used to explore, in the most intense form, existential questions regarding the meaning of human existence and the justice of the universe. Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental, then, that imaginative works about physical pain, though few in number, figure prominently among the masterpieces of the western literary tradition. The best were written during two of the west's most astonishing periods of literary creativity, fifth-century-BC Athens and nineteenth-century Russia, and by the most prominent artists of their time: Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, The Women of Trachis and Philoctetes by Sophocles; Notes from the House of the Dead by Dostoevsky; and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and War and Peace by Tolstoy. In all these works, physical pain is always portrayed as a dynamic process that includes the view point of the victim, the perpetrator (much of the physical pain is in the form of torture), and the onlooker or witness. In the Greek works, physical pain is the main vehicle for exposing the injustice of the gods and the world order, and in the Russian works for questioning the moral legitimacy of the state. In Prometheus Bound, Zeus delegitimizes his rule by torturing Prometheus for his service to mankind. In The Women of Trachis, the gods look indifferently upon the excruciating suffering of Hercules, the greatest Greek hero. In Philoctetes, the gods cruelly exploit the terrible pain of the hero as a means of winning victory at Troy for their Greek wards. In the Russian works, the mechanisms for inflicting the maximum amount of physical pain during corporal punishment undermine the moral foundations of the state and argue for its dissolution. Though the Greek and Russian works are separated by genre (plays vs novels) and by time (over two thousand years), they are united by the way they employ pain to investigate the justice-or rather injustice-of the world order.

A classic by a Russian master
Prince Myshkin, the idiot, is an almost comically innocent Christ figure in a land of sinners, one whose faith in beauty contrasts sharply with that of his society's.

This book is a study devoted to exploring the use of a Russian version of the Jewish stereotype (the ridiculous Jew) in the works of three of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Rosenshield does not attempt to expose the stereotype--which was self-consciously and unashamedly employed. Rather, he examines how stereotypes are used to further the very different artistic, cultural, and ideological agendas of each writer. What distinguishes this book from others is that it explores the problems that arise when an ethnic stereotype is so fully incorporated into a work of art that it takes on a life of its own, often undermining the intentions of its author as well as many of the defining elements of the stereotype itself. With each these writers, the Jewish stereotype precipitates a literary transformation, taking their work into an uncomfortable space for the author and a challenging one for readers.