Crime and Punishment. A Collection of Critical Essays

Henry James claimed he couldn’t finish it; Robert Louis Stevenson said it was, “the greatest book I have read in ten years... it nearly finished me.” These are just two of the varied responses that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has evoked since its publication. Offering numerous insights into why the novel has provoked such intense reaction among readers, this volume brings together comments by renowned Russian, European, and American critics. The first section includes Dostoevsky’s own explanation of his intention in writing Crime and Punishment, as well as analyses of the “motives” of Raskolnikov’s crime and the moral and philosophical dialectic leading to the murder. The other sections explore the novel’s main characters, deal with the questions of guilt and evil, examine the novel’s social setting, and assess the integral role played by the epilogue in Crime and Punishment. Containing many newly translated essays by contributors who range from early critics Berdyaev and Madaule to later scholars Kozhinnov, Jackson, and Frank, this volume is a significant contribution to critiques of the novel whose portrayal of murder, conscience, and human suffering remains unsurpassed even today.