Abstract

In this paper, I examine how A. I. Klementovskii in “Klikushi” (“Shriekers,”
1860), and I. G. Pryzhov in “Russkie klikushi” (“Russian Shriekers,” 1868), while aiming
to give medical and historical legitimacy to the phenomenon of klikushestvo (a Russian
form of religious hysteria), create a collective identity for the women who suffered from
this illness: the shriekers. I then consider how Dostoevskii used the collective identity
that emerged in Klementovskii’s and Pryzhov’s text to create his own shrieker character,
Sofia Ivanovna Karamazova. In the figure of Sofia Ivanovna, Dostoevskii individualized
and transformed the medicalized trope of the shrieker, mixing it with elements
of Christian martyrdom, and in so doing he makes Sofia Ivanovna central to the development
of “active love” in Alyosha’s character.