Crime and Punishment | Literary Precedents
It could be said that everything that Dostoevsky wrote was original, but he was indebted to Gogol and a few other earlier writers. Dostoevsky readily admitted the debt, remarking that he and his compeers all came out of the "folds" of Gogol's story "The Overcoat" (also translated as "The Greatcoat"). However, Dostoevsky broke so much new ground that he must be regarded as an original. "While Tolstoy and Turgenev were dealing with "high life" and often country settings, Dostoevsky was focusing on the poor and downtrodden in cities. Also, his attention to crime (especially murder) finds...
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