Slavic Colloquium

Prof. Julian Connolly
Confession(s) in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

While much of the narrative interest in Crime and Punishment is centered on the two subjects invoked in its own title:  crime (prestuplenie) and punishment (nakazanie), Dostoevsky’s most famous novel is also concerned with another abstract concept—confession (priznanie).   The sheer numbers and types of confession that appear in the novel are astounding.  This paper will investigate the myriad ways that confession crops up in Dostoevsky’s novel and see what it tells us about Dostoevsky’s central artistic and ethical preoccupations in the years after his own experience in the Russian criminal justice system.