P.N. Medvedev on the Methodological Foundations of the Study of the Work of F.M. Dostoevsky

Abstract

This article considers the methodological principles of studying the work of Dostoevsky, developed by an outstanding literary critic, critic and publicist of the 1920s and 1930s. Pavel Nikolayevich Medvedev, who was repressed on falsified political charges and shot by the NKVD in 1938. The scientist's main work is “The formal method in literary criticism. A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics”- in 1973 it was illegally attributed to M. M. Bakhtin, and his name was turned into a literary “mask” by M. M. Bakhtin. The works of P. N. Medvedev of the 1920s and 30s, currently published in the two-volume Collected Works of P. N. Medvedev, (St. Petersburg: Rostock 2018), prove the need to study his research on the “genre”, the idea of the author, which in the works of Dostoevsky is associated with the Orthodox view. The results of the study show the originality of the methodological principles of P. N. Medvedev and prove the need to return to science the name of this outstanding scientist and his works.