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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the role of history in the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and how the historical realities present in the text of his fictional works create an additional plot line. Using six works of different genres (“Mr. Prokharchin”, The Double, Uncle’s Dream, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov), which chronologically cover almost the entire period of Dostoevsky’s work from 1846 to 1880, the article examines the formation of historical and mythological subplots through the interweaving of various historical elements in the text: names, numbers, things, events and quotations. The article shows that the most important of these is the legendary name of a historical figure, which usually initiates the process of creating another level of the plot that exists on the edge of history and literature. The study focuses mainly on the Napoleonic myth, which is the most important for Dostoevsky’s work, but it also examines other legendary names, in addition to Napoleon I, which are directly mentioned by the author’s heroes: Lycurgus, Solon, Attila, Mohammed, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Kepler, Newton, Pugachev, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Talleyrand, Napoleon III and others.

Keywords: literary theory, history in fiction, Napoleonic myth, Napoleonic legend, Napoleonic wars, Solon, Lycurgus, Attila, Mohammed, Newton, Pugachev, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Napoleon III, “Mr. Prokharchin”, The Double, Crime and Punishment, Uncle’s Dream, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov.