Dostoievskean

comparative more Dostoievskean · superlative most Dostoievskean

1. alternativeAlternative form of Dostoyevskian.

   The actions of the Russians are little credible enough. But compared with Mr. Hughes ideas of the Nazi army, his Russians are Dostoievskean. One cannot but wish the real Nazi army were anything like what he imagines it to be.

   1943, Saturday Review of Literature, volume 26, page 42, column 2

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   For all their moral and intellectual anxieties, Jude and Sue give an impression of almost Dostoievskean simplicity and innocence, and their childlikeness, specifically reflected in Hardy’s abandoned title, “The Simpletons”, is emphasised throughout.

   1971, Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist, Random House, →ISBN, page 319

   This was a thoughtful and critical attitude, and also, basically, a sombre one beside which John Cowper’s seemed to be that of an inspired idiot and innocent of the Dostoievskean kind; and Llewelyn’s the posture of an attitudinizing romantic.

   1980, Belinda Humfrey, Recollections of the Powys Brothers: Llewelyn, Theodore, and John Cowper, Peter Owen Publishers, page 150

   In the Esmé story, for instance, Salinger’s surest masterpiece, the brilliant manipulation of a familiar crisis—devastated soldier finds an escape from his Dostoievskean hell through the kindness of a precocious girl—climaxes in a moment of karma that sidesteps the darker issue of the protagonist’s patent narcissistic fixation.

   1994, Reference Guide to Short Fiction, St. James Press, →ISBN, page 468, column 1