(Ne)dovršena priča o stilu F. M. Dostojevskog / The (un)finished story of F. M. Dostoevsky’s style

Abstract

The paper explores F. M. Dostoevsky’s style from the contemporary semantic-stylistic research perspective. Based on canonical work of M. Bakhtin on Dostoevsky and recent corpus-semantic explorations of Dostoevsky’s language, the paper aims to show how microelements at different language levels can be regarded as stylemes and build the unique style, harmonized with the main idea of Dostoevsky’s works. The paper focuses on the stylistic effects of intensifiers and their unusual collocations, and specific usage of particles. From the critical stylistics perspective, transitivity is explored, primarily passivisation – the removal of the agent / actor as an important styleme in Dostoevsky’s novels. The intensified expressiveness of the writer’s style, its “theatricality”, as well as the accelerated, sometimes broken prose rhythm, which also contributes to the speech characterization of his heroes, is also analysed. It can be concluded that criticism of Dostoevsky’s style is not justified, because that style is completely in compliance with the emotional states of his characters and with the key ideas of his works.