Desire, Death and Imitation: Narrative Patterns in the Late Tolstoy

Contents

Foreword
Chapter One: Tolstoy’s Realism
The poetics of realism
The invariant of death and desire
Some methodological consideration

Chapter Two: The Death of Ivan Il’ich
The frame
Tolstoy's absolute language
Ivan Il'ich from a distance
Illness and impending death
The prosecution
The world as lie and deception
The identification with Christ
Death according to the other

Chapter Three: The Kreutzer Sonata
The epic protosituation
The narrator
The dialogue
The marriage
The moralizer
Triangular desire
Remembering and repeating
The eye and the ear
Pozdnyshev and the history of sexuality

Chapter Four: Master and Man
The portraits
The circle
Temptation and temperance
Brekhunov's consciousness
The final return
Silence and extinction
Nikita’s death

Chapter Five: Concluding remarks

Bibliography
Index of Names