Originality, Decorum, and Fantastic Sight in Dostoevsky\u27s \u3ci\u3eThe Idiot\u3c/i\u3e

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “fantastic realism” penetrates reality’s surface to reveal what he refers to as the “moral center” of reality and, in the process, transfigures readers. In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, the novel’s main protagonist, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, embodies this fantastic realism. This process provides Myshkin with a “fantastic sight” that allows him to see past the immorality of the manners—or “feigned decorum”—of Russian society as represented in the novel. In so doing, Myshkin serves his peers as a “Nouwenian minister,” classifying him as a “wounded healer” archetype as presented in Henri J. M. Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer. This thesis also draws from the writings of Robin Feuer Miller, Harriet Murav, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Liza Knapp, and Marshall Gregory in an effort to demonstrate that Myshkin, as a “Nouwenian minister,” also serves as a positive, Christ-like role model for readers. Readers, as they participate in Myshkin’s ministry through the act of reading the novel, are transfigured, discovering how they can serve as Nouwenian ministers to others