Il nome “Aleksej” nella poetica dostoevskiana tra simboli e incarnazioni letterarie

This article analyzes the semantics of the name ‘Aleksey’ in Dostoevsky’s novels Humiliated and Insulted, The Gambler, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. The literary Alekseys of these novels, Alyosha Valkovsky, Aleksey Iva- novich, Aleksey Kirillov, and Alyosha Karamazov, share their simplicity, great sen- sitivity, and sometimes naivety. In fact, some of them are the victims of their own egoism, whereas some others become models of evangelical abnegation. This is not by chance, since in his works Dostoevsky creates a ‘mythology’ of ‘Aleksey’, where the name marks the destiny of man.