“Who, what am I?”: Tolstoy struggles to narrate the self

Abstract

to engage not just with critical thinking in Law and Literature, but also the whole critique of alienation that stems from the Critical Legal Studies movement (of which Law and Literature is something of an offshoot). In fact, Ronner’s conclusions, which stress the relevance to law of Dostoevskian notions of love, compassion and mercy, echo certain radical critiques of law, such as Huey P. Newton’s take on law and racism in his Revolutionary Suicide (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), which, incidentally, makes a reference to Dostoevsky. It would also have been interesting to read Dostoevsky in relation to, for example, Jacques Ellul’s or William Stringfellow’s Christian critiques of law. But even without taking the discussion in these other directions, Dostoevsky and the Law will certainly provoke its readers to think more deeply about the law.