Crime and Punishment at 150: Reconsidering the Novel's Epilogue

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

2016 marks the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. This panel will mark the occasion by reconsidering the novel’s controversial and much disputed epilogue. These three papers each take a different methodological approach to this problem. Bowers examines the epilogue from the perspective of genre theory, exploring where its tension between form and philosophy originates, and analyzing the work’s application of the “lowbrow” genre of detective fiction to its “highbrow” artistic ambitions. Holland compares the epilogue with the ending of The Brothers Karamazov, examining both from the perspective of Dostoevsky’s attempt to become reconciled to the novelistic form’s resistance to salvific narratives. Young uses distance reading tools, such as concordances and topic modelling, to compare the epilogue’s lexical patterns to those of the Petersburg text and Dostoevsky’s carceral works and to suggest further possibilities for digital analysis of Dostoevsky’s works.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Russian and Eurasian

Chair

• Deborah A. Martinsen, Columbia U

Papers

• Sent to Siberia: Reader Expectation and the Strange Epilogue of 'Crime and Punishment' - Katherine Bowers, U of British Columbia (Canada)

• Limitations of the Novel as Secular Narrative: a Comparison of the Endings of 'Crime and Punishment' and 'The Brothers Karamazov' - Kate Rowan Holland, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Lexical Shifts in the Epilogue of 'Crime and Punishment': a Machine Analysis - Sarah Jean Young, U College London (UK)

Discussant

• Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis U