Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment: A Casebook

This Casebook is a collection of interpretations of Crime and Punishment. The selection not only reflects earlier work by major critics in the field, but also more recent studies. At the same time the choice of critical approaches has been made on the basis of covering the novel's various aspects: Dostoevsky's debt to other novelists in the European tradition
his roots as a writer in the so-called "Natural School" of the 1840s with its emphasis on the theme of the city
the thematic and symbolic structure of the novel itself
the psychology of the hero
the philosophical content of the novel and its relationship to contemporary thought
the novel's religious dimension. This latter approach has long been established in western criticism, but the two essays with which the Casebook concludes are by modern Russian scholars, who examine the novel in the light of their own Orthodox tradition.