Apostate of the Natural School: Dostoevsky’s Narrative of Cognitive ‘Truth’ in The Double

This paper address controversies related to the reception of Dostoevsky’s second short novel The Double (1846) with respect to stylistic features and thematic concerns that challenged prevailing currents in the emerging poetics of social realism. Dostoevsky’s subversion of Natural School aims, in particular, is discussed in the light of selected texts by Vladimir Dal and Vladimir Sollogub, which serve as exemplars of the chinovnik genre, and must be seen as literary antecedents to The Double. The latter is examined within the context of a national literature in flux as a work that brings the chinovnik into engagement with the contradictions of modernity in ways that predecessors had not. Dostoevsky foregrounds the protagonist’s self-awareness and cognitive dissonance in such a way that could not be adequately broached using naturalistic conventions of mimesis. The author maintains that recent criticism pairing cognitive science and literature provides an avenue for examining Dostoevsky’s reinterpretation of Natural School standards and practices. Ultimately, The Double is seen as reframing the issues, combining romance idealism with psychological realism, and challenging the school’s voices of authority. As the Natural School aimed, ultimately, to reflect the truth about its service class heroes and their social reality, Dostoevsky creates, with the inventive portrait of Mr. Golyadkin and his double, a new sort of cognitive narrative which holds an authority of its own.