This thesis explores the connection between madness and identity in nineteenth-century Russian literature, with significant focus on works by Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, Gogol’ and Pushkin. Proposing personhood as comprised of the personal and the social, I argue that discrepancies between these two halves – relating to different types of breakdown in social relations – engender madness in Russian literary works.

Analysing a range of characters through the lens of a variety of identity theories, I argue that duality is projected in three dimensions in these texts. Personal and social selves are opposed in the formation of identity, as are the real and imaginary in the construction of fictional worlds. The duality of sanity and madness straddles both to create an interdependence of self and other across the three spheres.

Examining different types of ‘madness’, including clinical disorders such as mania and spiritual concepts such as holy folly, I argue that the fluidity of insanity in literary protagonists means it can be viewed as a non-alignment with the social other on any plane. I aim to answer the questions of how a disparity between perceptions of reality leads to a definition of madness, and the significance of the role the other plays in the categorisation of ‘the mad’ and ‘the sane’.

This thesis is divided into three main parts, assessing the mad individual in relation to: social system, society, and individuals. The first examines mania and St Petersburg’s social hierarchy, demonstrating how relational identities create a desire for power, and how idealised selves distance an individual from reality. The second addresses group mindsets to explore how fluid definitions of madness are determined according to the social environment within the spheres of the provinces and holy folly. The third investigates epilepsy and depression, highlighting the importance of a loving relationship and morality for sanity.