The article considers the self-deifying tyrannical personality type in Dostoevsky’s works 1) in connection with the topics of power and love in the 19 th century European culture; 2) in the overall context of human beings being destined for divinity (from the New Testament and the teachings of Church Fathers to Pico della Mirandola’s “The Oration on the Dignity of Man”; 3) in a typological comparison with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung with all three authors resolving this problem each in their own unique way.
Keywords
Self-deification; Mary Shelley; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Richard Wagner; theosis.