For Fyodor Dostoevsky, real ideas were things felt and not simply thought. This could explain why one might think that a novel like the Brothers Karamazov--his last and arguably greatest work-- has a philosophical, theological, or ideological value that would lend passion to what one already happens to believe. This course attempts a close reading of the novel that appreciates but ultimately exceeds its status as a source for social psychology, for theories of carnival and dialogue, Christian dogma, anti-theodicy, ethics, and political philosophy. After their initial encounter with what is, before anything else, a thrilling murder mystery, students examine the novel's contexts in a few of Dostoevsky's shorter works and in his notebooks, alongside secondary readings by Mikhail Bakhtin, Robert Belknap, Harriet Murav, Caryl Emerson, James Rice, Rene Girard, Gary Saul Morson, and others.