{"id":11273,"date":"2018-04-17T16:04:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T20:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/?page_id=11273"},"modified":"2019-02-28T13:59:17","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T18:59:17","slug":"wll-reads-the-brothers-karamazov","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wll-reads-the-brothers-karamazov\/","title":{"rendered":"WLL Reads The Brothers Karamazov"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Karamazov<\/a>On Saturday, April 7, Boston University hosted \u201cWorlds of\u00a0The Brothers Karamazov,<\/em>” the second in an annual series of one-day\u00a0 departmental symposia on \u201cBig Fat Books\u201d run by the Department of World Languages & Literatures. The symposium marked the culmination of months of intense discussion on campus of Dostoevsky\u2019s final novel and masterpiece, both in Prof. Corrigan\u2019s spring semester XL 230 course devoted to The Brothers Karamazov<\/em> and among the faculty of the department of World Languages and Literatures, who met regularly throughout the year to discuss the novel and to explore its significance across disciplines and literary traditions.<\/p>\n

The keynote speakers \u2013 Robin Feuer Miller (Brandeis University) and Gary Saul Morson (Northwestern University) \u2013 addressed a packed audience of about 80 people on the top floor of the BU Hillel. In her lecture, \u201cDostoevsky Writ Small,\u201d Prof. Miller emphasized the novel\u2019s apparently marginal events, images, and characters as portals into Dostoevsky\u2019s broader philosophical concerns. Prof. Morson presented \u201cSix Theses on\u00a0Karamazov<\/em>,\u201d which included insights into Dostoevsky\u2019s use of paradox in the novel, his treatment of scientific rationalism, and his emphasis on the moral importance of human emotions. These addresses were followed by two panels composed of BU faculty. The first, \u201cComparative Karamazov: West,\u201d included papers by Peter Schwartz (\u201cDialogues with the Devil\u201d), Ines Garcia de la Puente (\u201cIvan Karamazov: Author and Translator\u201d), and Yuri Corrigan (\u201cElena Ferrante\u2019s Dostoevsky\u201d). In the afternoon panel, \u201cComparative Karamazov: East,\u201d paper topics ranged from Natsume Soseki\u2019s complex relationship with Dostoevsky\u2019s writing (Keith Vincent) and the significance of Notes from Underground <\/em>for modern Korean literature (Yoon Sun Yang) to Haruki Murakami\u2019s career-long preoccupation with The Brothers Karamazov<\/em> (Anna Elliott), a new Japanese television adaptation of the novel (Sarah Frederick), and Dostoevsky\u2019s significance for modern Chinese literature (Catherine Yeh). Both panels addressed such problems as Dostoevsky\u2019s syntheses of the secular with the theological and of the psychological with the allegorical, while the second specifically addressed ways in which Dostoevsky\u2019s meditations upon the modern condition have functioned as a template for confrontations with modernity in multiple East Asian literary traditions. The final event of the day was a student panel in which eight students from Prof. Corrigan\u2019s course on The Brothers Karamazov <\/em>presented close readings of passages from the novel; this panel, like the others, was followed by lively discussion. Michael Katz (Middlebury College), William Mills Todd III (Harvard University), and Evgenia Cherkasova (Suffolk University Boston) served as chairs for the three panels. The day ended with a reception at the School of Theology and with a dinner for participants at the Szechuan Garden restaurant in Brookline.<\/p>\n