Mr . Astley and His Prototypes (Dostoevsky’s Novel “The Gambler”) Cover Image

Мистер астлей и его прототипы (о романедостоевского«игрок»)
Mr . Astley and His Prototypes (Dostoevsky’s Novel “The Gambler”)

Author(s): Sergey Akimovich Kibalnik
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Vytauto Didžiojo Universitetas
Keywords: Prototype; biographic; character; provenance; British; Russian

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the analysis of one of the main characters in the novel “The Gambler”, which is the first attempt by Dostoevsky to portray “a definitely beautiful person” later made by him once again in his novel “The Idiot”. Though Malcolm V. J ones pointed out that “it is unlikely that Dostoevsky based Mr. A stley on any real-life encounter with an Englishman”, nevertheless, some sources (e.g., Apollinaria Suslova’s diaries) tell us about some of her (and possibly Dostoevsky’s) real-life encounters with Englishmen or stories about this kind of encounters. Looking at these sources we can trace some hypothetic prototypes of Mister Astley. The comparison of the character of Mister Astley with some real-life Englishmen portrayed in Suslova’s diaries provides a better understanding of the ways of stylistic representation of the foreign character in the novel written in Russian. The carried out research shows that the created image of Mr. Astley in “The Gambler” have echoes in Dostoevsky’s future work, in particular, in his novel “The Idiot”: not only in the image of Prince Myshkin, but also in the way Elisaveta Prokof ’evna Epanchina is represented.

  • Issue Year: 2013
  • Issue No: 6
  • Page Range: 117-123
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Russian