On "The Gaze" As A Narrative Strategy In Dostoevsky's Early Novels

The “gaze” theory is an important theoretical achievement in the study of visual culture,in which the study of the “gaze” theory is one of the tributaries of the poststructuralist research wave.It is a research method that analyzes the construction of individual subjectivity from the perspective of power discipline.In Dostoevsky’s early novellas we can find that the “gaze” is a recurring action description,and its role in the stories goes beyond the description of the characters’ behavior to create rooms for the exchange of “gaze”.Changing the feeling of the character,“gaze” becomes a narrative strategy in novellas where the main role’s self-awareness changes as the direction of the story’s narrative.By analyzing the different forms of “gaze” in Dostoevsky’s early works,it is apparent that “gaze” has long gone beyond the narrative “point of view”,the former is not only the eye of observation,but also the eye of discipline that determines the construction of the character’s subjectivity.With the help of “gaze”,the characters build up a space-time of self-consciousness.In this way,the “gaze” is used as a kind of voice for communication and dialogue between them.This paper is unique in examining a new measure of incorporating the narrative vision of “gaze” and the “gaze” theory of cultural studies into the study of Dostoevsky’s early novellas.