This
Casebook
is a collection of interpretations of Crime and Punishment. The selection not only reflects earlier work by major critics in the field, but also more recent studies. At the same time the choice of critical approaches has been made on the basis of covering the novel's various aspects: Dostoevsky's debt to other novelists in the European tradition; his roots as a writer in the so-called "Natural School" of the 1840s with its emphasis on the theme of the city; the thematic and symbolic structure of the novel itself; the psychology of the hero; the philosophical content of the novel and its relationship to contemporary thought; the novel's religious dimension. This latter approach has long been established in western criticism, but the two essays with which the
concludes are by modern Russian scholars, who examine the novel in the light of their own Orthodox tradition.