{"product_id":"mimetic-lives-chlo-kitzinger-9780810143968","title":"Mimetic Lives: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Character in the Novel","description":"What makes some characters seem so real? \u003ci\u003eMimetic Lives: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Character in the Novel\u003c\/i\u003e explores this question through readings of major works by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Working at the height of the Russian realist tradition, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky each discovered unprecedented techniques for intensifying the aesthetic illusion that Chloë Kitzinger calls \u003ci\u003emimetic life\u003c\/i\u003e--the reader's sense of a character's autonomous, embodied existence. At the same time, both authors tested the practical limits of that illusion by extending it toward the novel's formal and generic bounds: philosophy, history, journalism, theology, myth. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Through new readings of \u003ci\u003eWar and Peace\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAnna Karenina\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Brothers Karamazov\u003c\/i\u003e, and other novels, Kitzinger traces a productive tension between mimetic characterization and the author's ambition to transform the reader. She shows how Tolstoy and Dostoevsky create lifelike characters and why the dream of carrying the illusion of \"life\" beyond the novel consistently fails. \u003ci\u003eMimetic Lives\u003c\/i\u003e challenges the contemporary truism that novels educate us by providing enduring models for the perspectives of others, with whom we can then better empathize. Seen close, the realist novel's power to create a world of compelling fictional persons underscores its resources as a form for thought and its limits as a direct source of spiritual, social, or political change. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Drawing on scholarship in Russian literary studies as well as the theory of the novel, Kitzinger's lucid work of criticism will intrigue and challenge scholars working in both fields.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Chloë Kitzinger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0810143968\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780810143968\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Northwestern University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/15\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.74lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 5.91w x 0.71d","brand":"Chloë Kitzinger","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44045503037695,"sku":"9780810143968","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_b6290630-eac1-4126-90d2-b87d32bf376e.jpg?v=1684979141","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/mimetic-lives-chlo-kitzinger-9780810143968","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}