The Archetype of Evil Genius A Comparative Study: John Milton, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Abstract

There is not any doubt that there are spheres of human culture that are capable of appealing with a powerful force to a person’s heart at times allaying, like catharsis, surrounding anxieties and at times bringing thrill of unexpectedness to the existence racked with quotidian. One of these spheres is literature, the ever-growing circle of intertextuality and social communication that, as it is held by Greenblatt, is an inconceivable “circulation of social energy” (qtd. in Harpham xii) whose chief objective is, to continue with Pereverzev’s pronouncement in Literature of Ancient Russia, to be “a means for the most intimate, earnest and heartfelt communion between man and man, between the artist and reader,” (qtd. in Jackson 60) the symbiosis allowing for a profound comprehension of archetypes permeating this realm of meanings. Indubitably, the archetype of iniquity along with its instigator and perpetrator materializes in the realm of literature as one of the most inspiring.