CSP 67 Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
This course examines Fyodor Dostoevsky’s revolutionary novel Crime and Punishment from multiple perspectives. In addition to Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, we’ll be reading his novels The Gambler and Notes from Underground, as well as works by authors that influenced Dostoevsky, such as Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol. We’ll also be examining and discussing the socio-political climate that engendered the literary debate in which Crime and Punishment is situated. In examining the novel, we’ll be addressing a wide variety of issues: human exploitation, sexual abuse, law vs. justice, the role of the intellectual in transforming society, the nature and possibility of “utopia,” as well as questions of artistic composition, creation of characters, the diffusion of the author’s position through the characters, and other issues.
Prerequisite
Open only to first year frosh