Crime and Punishment and British Gothic of Horror

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Author: Tatyana V. Kovalevskaya

Information about the author:

DSc in Philosophy, Associate Professor (VAK), Chair, European Languages Department, Institute of Linguistics, Russian State University for the Humanities, Miusskaia Sq., 6, 125993 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0527-2289

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For citation:

Kovalevskaya, T.V. “Crime and Punishment and British Gothic of Horror.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 2 (26), 2024, pp. 101–130. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2024-2-101-130

Received: 12 Mar. 2024

Published: 25 June 2024

Issue: 2024 no. 2 (26)

Department: DOSTOEVSKY: HIS READINGS

Pages: 101-130

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2024-2-101-130

EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/OBRJKV

UDK: 821.161.1.0+821.111

BBK: 83.3(2=411.2)+83.3(4)

Keywords: Fyodor Dostoevsky, gothic of horror, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the fantastic, self-deification, vampirism, George Gordon Byron, Mary Shelley, John William Polidori.

Abstract: The article considers Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment alongside several works of the British Gothic tradition of horror (Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk, John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre”) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus that essentially is the first representative of science fiction in British literature. The fantastic element in the gothic of horror was very important for Dostoevsky as a visible manifestation of the level of being beyond the material plane. “The Vampyre” and The Monk manifest certain commonality of themes and motifs with both Dostoevsky’s oeuvre in general and Crime and Punishment in particular. These include “vampiric” descriptions of heroes (Svidrigailov and Stavrogin), the consequent motif of the “living dead,” the theme of sensuality. These parallels are particularly topical for Crime and Punishment as they emphasize Dostoevsky’s key recurrent motifs that are not always immediately visible in Svidrigailov. However, the most interesting typological parallels emerge between Dostoevsky’s overarching plot (human beings’ attempts at self-deification, i.e. at going beyond their nature and toward godhood) and the plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. While the subject of self-deification as such is not innovative (Shelley’s and Dostoevsky’s predecessors in this regard include epic poems of different peoples and eras, tragedies by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare), Shelley and Dostoevsky pioneered the subject of human inability to rival God not in their creative or destructive power, but in their ability to love. Inability to love in a true Christian way was also part of The Monk, but it was Shelley’s work that foregrounded it. Therefore, the English gothic of horror and Dostoevsky’s oeuvre are connected both at the level of individual themes and motifs and at the level of religious and philosophical conceptualization of human teleology.

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