The Experience of Time in Crime and Punishment

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky is very attentive to his characters' experience of time. This study elaborates this explicit psychological information into a useful textual (rather than extra-textual) criterion for interpreting the deepest layers of meaning in the novel: those ontological and religious presuppositions upon which the action turns and which it is designed to demonstrate. The study includes discussions of time and the etiology of evil; Raskolnikov's messianic crime; legal injustice in the conflict between Porfiry and Raskolnikov; Svidrigaylov's eschatological predicament; and the central role of Lizaveta in the novel.