The problem of madness in 1865-1880s novels of F. Dostoyevsky

In Dostoevsky's works, we face the problem of multi-layer phenomenon of madness. To highlight the textone must resort to very diverse criteria. The category of madness appears in Dostoevsky's works both in the medical sense and in everydayunderstanding. There are high cultural connotations of madness (Hamlet's and Quixotic's types), and low and negative ("Речебезумец в сердце своем: несть Бог" in The Brothers Karamazov). We comprehend the artistic realization of the insanity problem inDostoevsky's work in all the diversity of its manifestations to create empirical and methodological foundations for the research on theaesthetic and moral-religious functions of this phenomenon in this writer's world. As is shown in the article, the different forms of madnessexistence (and the difference in Dostoevsky's works may take the form of contrast, mutually exclusive options) can perform distinctfunctions of art. The material of the analysis is the last five Dostoevsky's novels  the so-called Pentateuch. The analysis of Dostoevsky's novel made it possible to distinguish between three basic types of insanity categories in this writer's texts: nominative madness,behavioural madness and the clinical type of madness. Characterization of these types of illustrative material on a wide range ofDostoyevsky's writings makes the bulk of the work. Nominative madness includes two variants: naming of the event (characteristicsgiven by characters to each other or to any phenomenon) and so-called statements of condition (nominations and descriptions given bythe author). Concerning behavioural insanity here belong all sorts of eccentric behaviour (foolishness, tomfoolery, scandals) and ultimate(including criminal) violations of behavioural norms. Clinical insanity is considered with regard to the interest of Dostoevsky inpsychopathology, which (the interest) on the one hand was the cause of the writer's illness and on the other hand it was a polemic attitudeto contemporary materialist psychology, typical for him. As is shown in the article, madness, in all the forms found, is the environmentof the characters self-disclosure and world's essence exposure so it has its place as part of "Fantastic Realism".

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