Reading Faithfully: Russian Modernist Criticism and the Making of Dostoevsky, 1881-1917

Reading Faithfully reveals how Russian critics of the Silver Age (the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) reread and remade Fyodor Dostoevsky for their era of religious renewal amid a broader political embrace of liberal reform and radical politics. Lindsay Ceballos argues that most Silver Age critics engaged in a mode of critique approaching religious faith: critical faith in the moral and artistic value of Dostoevsky that was needed to overcome their doubts about his nationalist rhetoric and politics. Surveying leading critics on and theatrical adapters of Dostoevsky’s fiction since his death in 1881, Ceballos advocates for new kinds of critical engagement with his work that draw on the example of Silver Age faithful reading but embrace more complexity and dissonance than critics were able to achieve in that period of fracture and upheaval.

Reading Faithfully provides a historical account of Russian culture in a pivotal period, bringing together literary, intellectual, and theater history into one narrative. Ceballos challenges Dostoevsky scholars, asking: What is the future of reading Dostoevsky in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Lindsay Ceballos is Assistant Professor of Russian and East European Studies at Lafayette College. She is the author of articles on Russian literature and culture and coeditor of Seers of Flesh and Spirit.