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The focus of this study in comparative criticism is close analysis of Dostoevsky's first literary publication-his 1844 translation of the first edition of Balzac's Eug nie Grandet (1834)-and the stylistic choices that he made as a young writer while working on Balzac's novel. Through the prism of close reading, the author analyzes Dostoevsky's literary debut in the context of his future mature aesthetic style and poetics. Comparing the original and the translation side by side, this book focuses on the omissions, additions and substitutions that Dostoevsky brought into the text. It demonstrates how young Dostoevsky's free translation of Eugenie Grandet predicts the creation of his own literary characters, themes, and other aspects of his literary output that are now recognized as Dostoevsky's signature style. It investigates the changes that Dostoevsky made while working on Balzac's text and analyzes the complex transplantation of Balzac's imagery, motifs, and character portraiture from Eugenie Grandet into Dostoevsky's own writing later on.

This book is inspired by the author's work as part of a major international and interdisciplinary research group at the University of Konstanz, Germany: "What If-On the Meaning, Relevance, and Epistemology of Counterfactual Claims and Thought Experiments." Having contributed to great discoveries, such as those by Galileo and Einstein, thought experiments are especially topical in the twenty-first century, since this is a concept that bridges the gap between the arts and the sciences, promoting interdisciplinary innovation. To study thought experiments in literature, it is imperative to examine relevant texts closely: this has rarely been done to date and this is precisely what this book does as a pilot study focusing on selected works of philosophy and literature. Specifically, thought experiments by Thomas Malthus are analyzed side by side with short stories and novels by Vladimir Odoevsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Alexander Bogdanov and Aleksei Tolstoy, Alexander Chaianov and Nina Berberova.

This is the first volume to reconstruct and examine Soviet engagement with world literature from multiple institutional and disciplinary perspectives (intellectual history; literary history and theory; comparative literature; translation studies; diaspora studies); the book is a vital contribution to current debates on world literature in and beyond the field of Slavic and East European Studies.