Tolstoy.The Comprehensive Vision

London England: Methuen & Co, 1980. Paperback. Best known as the creator of such superb characters as Pierre Bezukhov and Anna Karenina, Tolstory was as much a philospher as a novelist. From the entries in his early diaries through to the short stories and great novels he was attempting to answer an extraordinary range of fundamental questions. It was in his personal diaries that Tolstoy first attempted to develop a 'literary psycholoty' with which to reveal those thoughts and feelings we conceal from ourselves. Then in his early work he invented the interior monologue to expose the psychology of his characters. The use of this technique reached its height in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Emphasizing, then, the importance of these early characteristics for Tolstoy's development as a writer, the author assesses Tolstoy's character-points in the light of his intense engagement with, for example, the question of the nature of happiness and the problem of historical truth in fiction. He also looks in detail at Tolstoy's views on society and education, his understanding of military history and his feeling for the psychology of war, and in the later chapters takes a sympathetic but critical look at his answers to the ethical and religious questions that increasingly preoccupied him as he grew older. Tolstoy was constanctly searching in his life and in his art for a comprehensive vision - a vision equal to 'the confusion of life'. This challenging study sets out to do justice both to the imaginative drama and to the intellectual penetration of that search. 184 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions ,and all types of Academic Literature.) . 1st Methuen Edition. Soft Cover. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Paperback.