This course examines some of Dostoevsky's most important works through the lens of novel theory. We will read several of Dostoevsky's novels in chronological order, examining the evolution of his own thoughts on the novel as a genre from his first novel, Poor People, to his problematic penultimate work, The Adolescent. Alongside the novels we will read works by several central novel theorists and Dostoevsky scholars, including Viacheslav Ivanov, Georg Lukacs and Mikhail Bakhtin, examine the influence of Dostoevsky's novels on their understanding of the novelistic form and on the evolution of their ideas about the genre and its relation to history and modernity. Topics of discussion will include: the novelistic narrator; novelistic plot; novelistic narrative; time and space; the generic history and prehistory of the novel; the novel and the self; the novel's relation to the present; novelistic subgenres including the Bildungsroman; the novel's simultaneous status as fragment and totality; and the particular and the universal in novelistic representation.