Some Notions of the Concepts of ‘Fear’ and ‘Laughter’ in Selected Works of Dostoevsky: Challenges and Evocations …

Abstract

ABSTRACT Dostoevsky is often perceived as being both gloomy and unsociable, and, indeed, there are many justifiable reasons for this view of the writer. For example, many deaths occur throughout his works but there are also many other events described which may make Dostoevsky’s readers experience fear – namely the actual discovery of fear itself. This present article attempts to challenge such a view of Dostoevsky and his creative works, by using some lexicographical data, including experimental ones, and thereby to show that the concept of ‘laughter’ in Dostoevsky's thesaurus occupies no less an important place than does the concept of ‘fear’. Moreover, these notions are often interrelated as will be shown by the overlapping of the corresponding semantic fields in the textual space of two of Dostoevsky's major novels, namely in Crime and Punishment and in The Demons.