The Poetics of Punishment and Reform in Tolstoy's "Resurrection"
FAIN: FT-54807-07
Anna Schur
Keene State College (Keene, NH 03435-0001)
The project explores Tolstoy’s ideas about punishment and moral reform in his late writings. Devoted primarily to "Resurrection," it both contributes to the sparse scholarship on the novel and shifts its focus. In contrast to existing readings, which understand Tolstoy’s rejection of punishment in Scriptural terms, I contextualize Tolstoy’s ideas in two ways. I consider them in relation to the late 19th-century debate on crime management in Russia and in the West, and in relation to Tolstoy’s own philosophy of self. The paper argues that Tolstoy rejects all punishment not only as morally reprehensible but also as philosophically unsound. The project is part of a book-length study of the 19th-century novel and moral reform discourse.