Glossary of Terms
Agnosticism: A philosophy that holds that one cannot know whether God exists.
Allegory: A story that acts as an extended metaphor; a parable.
Asceticism: An austere, simple lifestyle associated with the pursuit of spiritual discovery.
Atheism: The belief that God does not exist.
Avarice: Greed.
Benefactor: One who offers financial help to another.
Cana of Galilee: The site where Christ performed his first miracle, changing water into wine, at a wedding celebration.
Catharsis: The dramatic purging of feelings of guilt or tension.
Consumption: A colloquial term for tuberculosis.
Ecclesiastical: Pertaining to a church.
Elder: A high-ranking monk.
Epilepsy: A disease of the neurological system characterized by violent seizures.
Faro: A card game where the players bet on what cards will turn up.
Freemasonry: A mysterious fraternity, originally of stone workers, that is dedicated to helping one another and society.
Friedrich Schiller: A German philosopher and poet in the late 18th century.
Mysticism: A set of spiritual beliefs centered on the idea that one can experience spiritual clarity, not through rationality but in other ways such as, in the Christian mystic tradition, by praying, fasting, and imitating Christ.
Nihilism: A philosophy based on the belief that religion and morality are meaningless. Nihilists believe that God does not exist and that life has no meaning.
Oedipal Stage: Freud believed that there is a stage of development where a child will feel competitive with his father for his mother’s love.
Parricide: Murder of one’s own father.
Paternal: Fatherly.
Penance: A voluntary punishment undergone to show penitence for a sin.
Pestle: A grinding tool used to crush varied things such as food or mortar.
Preconsciousness: Latent memories that can be accessed by the conscious mind.
Profligate: Immoral or debauched.
Rationalism: The belief that one can find truth through reason and deduction.
Requiem: A service or hymn for someone who has died.
Ruble: The unit of Russian currency, worth 100 kopecks.
Sensualist: A person who pursues sensual enjoyment.
Serf: In the feudal system, a serf is a peasant who does forced labor, usually working for a landowner.
Spanish Inquisition: In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, non-Catholics were persecuted by the Catholic Church. Recent converts to the church were interrogated for blasphemy.
Tirade: An outburst of violent invective.
Troika: A Russian cart pulled by three horses.
ClassicNote on The Brothers Karamazov
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