Assignment One:

Read the Chronology of Dostoevsky's Life and Work (239-240).
Part One (pp. 3 - 28)
In writing:
 Click here for the question sheet. Print it. (You may want to answer some of the questions as you read..) The sheet will be handed in.

Part Two, Sections I - V (pp. 29 - 59)
In writing:
Click here for the question sheet. Print it. (You may want to answer some of the questions as you read..) The sheet will be handed in. 

Part Two, Sections VI - X (pp. 59 - 89)
In writing:
Click here for the question sheet. Print it. (You may want to answer some of the questions as you read..) The sheet will be handed in. 

Notes was written, in part, as a reaction against Chernyshevsky's What Is to be Done. Read the selection from that text (pp. 99-117).
In writing:
In 25-50 words, explain what Dostoevsky may have been objecting to in Chernyshevsky's novel.

If you are in Group 1, read and take notes on:
     Mikhailovsky, "Dostoevsky's Cruel Talent" (135-139), and
     Shestov's "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche" (142-146).
If you are in Group 2, read and take notes on:
     Bakhtin, "Discourse in Dostoevsky" (146-156).
If you are in Group 3, read and take notes on:
    Weisberg, "The Formalistic Model" (190-202)
Write a short summary (25-50 words) of each article you are responsible for. (Be sure to include the author's main idea and the approach that the author takes.) In class, small groups will be composed of members of each of these three groups, and you will share your reports.

1. Ralph E. Matlaw (pp. 156-171) and Joseph Frank (pp. 202-237) differ significantly in their critical approaches and in their analysis of this novella.  They have, for example, entirely different evaluations of the narrator. In your paper, consider some of their differences. Is it possible that they both can be right? How does the approach each critic takes affect his conclusions?

2. Gary Saul Morson (in "[Anti-Utopianism in Notes from Underground]") claims that "The psychology of the underground thus refutes the Allegory of the Cave." (190) Compare the image of man and the question of free will in the two works.

3. Collect the animal and insect imagery in the novel and write an essay about its meaning. ("Zverkov" comes from the Russian "zver'," which is the word for wild -- as opposed to domesticated -- animal.)