Features of the Chinese Reception of F.M. Dostoevsky's Novel "The Idiot": Psychological Aspect

The subject of the research is the characteristics of the Chinese reception of F.M. Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" from a psychological perspective. It analyzes how modern Chinese readers perceive the inner world of the characters, their motivations, emotional conflicts, and key scenes of the novel, as well as how they relate their own experiences to the portrayed suffering, love, madness, and hope. The empirical basis consists of a corpus of 999 reviews posted on the Douban platform (Books section) for ten editions of the novel in Chinese. Special attention is given to the images of Prince Myshkin, Nastasya Filippovna, Aglaya, and Rogozhin, and how readers' comments reflect the psychological perception of these characters through Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist ideas about humanity, the meaning of suffering, duty, and moral choice. The methodological foundation of the study is a corpus analysis of 999 Chinese reader reviews of "The Idiot" using Python, which includes quantitative and qualitative methods to identify frequent emotional-evaluative vocabulary, key themes, motifs, episodes, and typical patterns of psychological response. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive examination of the psychological aspect of the Chinese reception of the novel "The Idiot," based on a large corpus of online reviews, allowing for the reconstruction of the living perception of Dostoevsky in a different linguistic and cultural environment. It demonstrates that Chinese readers, while experiencing difficulties due to the complexity of names, polyphony, and detailed psychological renderings, simultaneously show a high level of empathy and compassion for the characters. Their evaluation of the characters' actions and feelings is viewed through Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist notions of humanity, duty, and harmony, leading to a unique interpretation of the Christian themes of the novel. It concludes that the psychological perception of "The Idiot" is determined by ethno-confessional cultural categories, specific cognitive attitudes, and the level of reading competence of the Chinese audience. Thus, it clarifies Dostoevsky's place in the contemporary Chinese cultural space.

Dostoevsky, The Idiot, Chinese reception, reviews, corpus analysis, psychological aspect, emotional perception, Chinese readers, Douban, eligious and philosophical context