Abstract

In the history of comparative scholarship on Dickens and Dostoevsky, many scholars have discussed comedy as a key point of affiliation between the two novelists. One scholar in particular has argued that both novelists portray comic buffoonery as a form of psychological escape from reality. Contrary to that idea, in two subplots with surprising parallels in Great Expectations and The Brothers Karamazov, Dickens and Dostoevsky represent comic play—tomfoolery—as a deliberately chosen way of confronting an absurd reality to bring health or healing. Ultimately, as a “love beyond logic” drives the characters in these stories to serve others through the power of comic play, they themselves become like little children, echoing each novel’s larger theme that growing older and wiser means becoming capable of the laughter of a little child.