Possessions of writing: J. M. Coetzee's reinterpretation of Dostoevsky's fiction in The Master of Petersburg
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-4765.rus.2025.241628Keywords:
Dialogism, Polyphony, Writing, Possession, J. M. CoetzeeAbstract
This paper proposes a comparative analysis of the critical and fictional resonances between the work of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and the novel "The Master of Petersburg" by South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee. Through a comparative approach, the study sought to identify narrative connections between the aforementioned novel and the broader Dostoevskyan oeuvre regarding the positions assumed by the characters throughout the plot. Thus, the research highlighted that, based on the characters constructed by J. M. Coetzee in his novel, there is an articulation and appropriation of Dostoevskyan dialogism through the characters' statements, leading the plot to simulate a "possession" that occurs not through the denotative meaning of this word, but rather through its use as a metaphor in the process of fictional writing.
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