Description
When an Archbishop of Canterbury takes time off to write a book about Dostoevsky, this is a sign of great hope and encouragement for The Church of England and for all those who seek God.
The current rash of books hostile to religious faith will one day be an interesting subject for some sociological analysis.
But to counter such work, is a book of the profoundest kind about the nature and purpose of religious belief. Terrorism, child abuse, absent fathers and the fragmentation of the family, the secularisation and the sexualisation of culture, the future of liberal democracy, the clash of cultures and the nature of national identity - so many of the anxieties that we think of as being quintessentially features of the early twenty first century and on, are present in the work of Dostoevsky - in his letters, his journalism and above all in his fiction.
The world we inhabit as readers of his novels is one in which the question of what human beings owe to each other is left painfully and shockingly open and there is no place to stand from which we can construct a clear moral landscape. But the novels of Dostoevsky continually press home what else might be possible if we - characters and readers - saw the world in another light, the light provided by faith. In order to respond to such a challenge the novels invite us to imagine precisely those extremes of failure, suffering and desolation. There is an unresolved tension in Dostoevsky's novels- a tension between believing and not believing in the existence of God. In The Brothers Karamazov, we can all receive Ivan with a terrible kind of delight. Ivan's picture of himself we immediately recognise as self-portrait. The god that is dead for him is dead for us. This Karamazov God of tension and terror is often the only one we are able to find. This extraordinary book will speak to our generation like few others.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Christ Against the Truth
2.Devils
3. The Last Word? Dialogue and Recognition
4. Exchanging Crosses
5. Sacrilege and Revelation:Thje Broken Image
Conclusion
Bibliography
Author(s)
Rowan Williams,
The Rt. Hon. and Most Reverend Rowan Williams is Archbishop of Canterbury. He was formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Archbishop of Wales.
Reviews
"The Archbishop of Canterbury has written a book on Dostoevsky which illuminates the real operations of religion in human minds.... We need a guide who combines the gifts of a literary critic and a trained theologian to work out how far the novels of Dostoevsky can be used as vehicles for such explorations. We also need a guide who is deeply versed in the ethos and spiritual traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church to place Dostoevsky, and the tormented exchanges of his characters, within some intelligible historical framework. Luckily the Archbishop of Canterbury combines all these qualities, and more"
A. N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement
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"Williams takes into account a vast range of critical writing on his subject as well as the work of theologians and philosophers... Anyone who studies this book carefully and is not familiar with Dostoevsky's novels, is likey to go away with a desire to read them"
Paul Richardson, Church of England Newspaper, October 2008
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"Rowan Williams is an excellent literary critic. He makes you want to read, or reread, everything that Dostoevsky wrote. The books that he describes are spacious enough to contain a whole world, and beautiful enough to serve as icons that illuminate ours"
Andrew Brown, The Guardian, September 2008
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"There is an engagement with contemporary literature which is hard to find in any other public figure... He speaks knowledgeably and and appreciatively"
The Daily Telegraph, September 2008
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"Although Rowan Willaims is very modest about hsi credentials in writing an important book on Dostoevsky, it is difficult to think of anyone who is better qualified... a remarkable contribution to understanding not just Dostoevsky, but what it might involve to be a religious believer in the world today"
Richard Harries, Church Times, October 2008
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"His discussion of icons is a wonderful fusion of literary criticism and theological exposition, which makes more sense of the Christian understanding of the incarnation than almost anything I have ever read on the subject"
Andrew Brown, The Guardian, September 2008
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"...a real feeling for literary narrative... a profound and thought provoking book"
Salley Vickers, The Times, September 2008
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"There are some splendid reflections in this study on the affinities between faith and literary form ... Dostoevsky reveals the kind of exquisite subtelty of insight we have come to expect from this poet-philosopher." The Tablet
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"Rowan Williams' fascinating book intermittently achieves what the best literary criticism strives for - smart readings of challenging works that simultaneously find ways to shed some light on some urgent problems of our time"
Times Higher Education Supplement, November 2008
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"Wild Ecstasy, people having fits, sons murdering fathers, prostitutes converting psychopaths to Christ-this is the world of Dostoevsky, and you can see why the Archbishop finds it a refreshing change from the current Liliputian crises in the Church"
Mary Miers, Country Life, November 2008
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"Permeated by Williams's distinctive vocabulary... [this book is] challenging and inspiring"
Third Way, November 2008
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"A brilliantly argued and profound study of this most radical and thought-provoking of novelists." - Independent on Sunday
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'[Williams] shows a commonality that is at the heart of human searching and faith.' Publishing News, May 2008
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'From the very first to the very last, the Most Rev Dr Rowan Williams emphasises that this is a work of importance for our own day ... This survey is magisterial and sets the parameters for the ongoing argument. Williams draws effortlessly from the whole of Dostoevsky's work. In doing so he shows an intimate knowledge of the language, piety, culture and quirkiness of mind of the people whose minds and interactions he goes on to study. It is truly awesome ... The lessons Dr Williams draws from this superb piece of literary criticism and social analysis are pressing ones for our own age which makes this a work of prophecy as much as anything else.' Methodist Recorder, February 2009
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'Of all the ink dedicated to the disclosing of the mystery of Dostoevsky, very little has been as self-aware as taht which issues from the pen of the Archbishop ... To say that this is an impressive book, one that can help us to read Dostoevsky afresh, would be banal ... Williams has published a confession of the delight he takes in writing; in his writing about Dostoevsky's novels we find manifested (and dauntingly so) a theology of reading, a theology of the word made ink.' International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, February 2009
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"A close literary study of character, structure and language...it is also a powerful commentary on the big issues. The novel is then a richly textured mix of styles, voices, language with different levels of meaning. "
Christian Librarian, Spring 2009
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"He is clearly on top of the changing critical evaluations of Dostoevsky that have taken place over the past century"
Richard Harries, Church Times, 3 October 2008
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"I found this book fascinating"
"The supreme value of this book...lies in its attempt to draw on the rich insights of Russian personalism and Bakhtin's dialogism in order than to ask questions of vital importace for our 21st century western culture"
Volume 5 Issue 3
Paul Rowan,
"you should read this book"
The Reader, No.34, Summer 2009
John Scrivener,
"Rowan William's study of Dostoevsky may be an elliptical contribution to the debate. It is also the most penetrating and unsettling...Unlike most other recent books on the lash between faith and modernity, Williams offers no pat answers. But, like the sly Russian master himself, his questions are impossible to shake out of one's head"
Mark Thompson, Prospect Magazine, August 2009
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