Themes and Style
Dostoyevsky's works comprise such themes as suicide, poverty, human manipulation and morality. His early works emphasised the realistic and naturalistic social life, that is the differences between poor and rich. Since his release, Dostoyevsky incorporated religious themes, particularly Russian Orthodox, into his oeuvre. "An explorer of ideas", Dostoyevsky manifested the "tumultuous period in Russian history", which was "undoubtedly shaped by the sociopolitical happenings he witnessed". Influences from other writers, clearly evident especially in his early works, led to accusations of plagiarism, but his style gradually developed in the course of the years. Elements of gothic fiction, romanticism and satire are inherent parts in some of his books. Apart from philosophical, psychological and religious themes, Dostoyevsky also wrote spy fiction and suspense literature. Dostoyevsky's oeuvre includes novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories, essays, epistolary novels and even poems.
Read more about this topic: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Famous quotes containing the words themes and/or style:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)