Motives of Home and Homelessness in the Novel by F.M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”

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Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the complex motive “home-antidome” in the work of F. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”. Studying the motive as a key unit of narratology, the author comes to the conclusion that in Dostoevsky’s poetry a special role is played by antinomic motives, the multidirectional semantic potential of which contributes to the complexity of the poetic dialectic of the writer. Thus, the motive of the home in Dostoevsky’s novel is inextricably linked with the motives of homelessness, wandering, the search for the place in the world by the heroes of the novel. Each of the heroes of the novel is a “bearer of the motive function” of home. The image of old Karamazov is associated with the idea of desacralizing the house as an intimate, family space. Each of the brothers is in a transit situation, not having, according to the thesis of Yu.M. Lotman, fastening to a certain topos. Homelessness becomes for heroes of the work the starting point of a spiritual search. Using the methods of linguistic-poetic and literary analysis, the author of the article concludes that the motives of the anti-home in the “Brothers Karamazov” novelty explicate the writer’s idea of a person and his place in the world, and in a broader sense, of the past and future of Russia, which has lost touch with previous generations and faith in God.

About the authors

Meruert B. Yeleussizova

Al-Farabi Kazakh National University

Author for correspondence.
Email: eleusizovameruert@gmail.com

2nd year undergraduate of the Department of Russian Philology and World Literature of Kazakh National University named after Al-Farabi.

71, Al-Farabi, Almaty, 050040, Republic of Kazakhstan

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Copyright (c) 2020 Yeleussizova M.B.

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