The lineage of Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

1866

Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Russian Golden Age. Russia. written in Russian.

Dostoevsky's novel follows Rodion Raskolnikov, a destitute former student in St. Petersburg who murders an old pawnbroker to test his theory that extraordinary men may transgress moral law, and then suffers guilt, pursuit by the investigator Porfiry, and a slow turn toward redemption through Sonya Marmeladova. It joins a French-derived crime-and-ideas plot to Russian Orthodox themes of suffering and resurrection.

Where it came from

Find “Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)” on Amazon

1835

Père Goriot (Le Père Goriot)

Honoré de Balzac

July Monarchy. France. written in French.

An old man ruins himself for his ungrateful daughters while the young provincial Rastignac learns the rules of Parisian ambition, tempted by the convict Vautrin.

What it handed down

To Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) (1866)

Direct source, probable.

Rastignac asks Bianchon whether he would kill an unknown mandarin in China by an act of will if it made him rich, a question about killing one person for one's own advancement. Raskolnikov overhears a student and officer in a tavern argue that killing the useless old pawnbroker would benefit hundreds, a scene scholars regularly trace to Balzac, whom Dostoevsky had translated and admired since the 1840s.

Where it came from

Find “Père Goriot (Le Père Goriot)” on Amazon

c. 1606

King Lear

William Shakespeare

Jacobean. England. written in English.

An old king divides his realm between flattering daughters, rejects the honest one, and is destroyed; a parallel plot has Edmund deceive his father Gloucester.

What it handed down

To Père Goriot (Le Père Goriot) (1835)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Goriot, a father who gives everything to two daughters who abandon him and who dies raving for them, is widely read as a bourgeois Lear. Balzac knew Shakespeare in French translation, and the novel reuses the play's pattern of parental love repaid with ingratitude.

To The Robbers (Die Räuber)

Structural model, well documented.

Franz Moor, the scheming younger son who forges a letter to turn his father against his brother, is modeled on Edmund's deception of Gloucester. Schiller's preface and early reception both tie the play to Shakespeare, whom the Sturm und Drang took as its model.

Where it came from

The True Chronicle History of King Leir, Anonymous c. 1590

Find “King Lear” on Amazon

c. 1590

The True Chronicle History of King Leir

Anonymous

Elizabethan. England. written in English.

An earlier stage version of the Leir story, ending with the king restored.

What it handed down

To King Lear (c. 1606)

Direct source, well documented.

Shakespeare took the main plot of the king, the love test, and the three daughters from this older play, which was printed in 1605. He changed the ending so that Cordelia and Lear die.

Where it came from

History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), Geoffrey of Monmouth c. 1136

Find “The True Chronicle History of King Leir” on Amazon

c. 1136

History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Anglo-Norman. England. written in Latin.

A legendary history of Britain from the Trojan Brutus through Leir and Arthur.

What it handed down

To The True Chronicle History of King Leir (c. 1590)

Direct source, well documented.

Geoffrey's chronicle is the earliest surviving telling of King Leir and his daughters Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla. The story reached the Elizabethan stage through Holinshed and other chroniclers who copied it.

Where it came from

Aeneid (Aeneis), Virgil 19 BCE

Find “History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)” on Amazon

19 BCE

Aeneid (Aeneis)

Virgil

Augustan. Augustan Rome. written in Latin.

Epic of the Trojan Aeneas, his love for Dido, his descent to the underworld, and his war to found Rome.

What it handed down

To Paradise Lost

Structural model, well documented.

Milton takes Virgil's epic machinery: invocation, beginning in the middle, a long retrospective narration, and a closing prophecy of future history. Michael's vision of the future in the last books parallels Anchises showing Aeneas Rome's destiny.

To History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae) (c. 1136)

Direct source, well documented.

Geoffrey opens with Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, who leaves Italy and founds Britain. The book grafts British history onto the end of Virgil's epic, as Rome's founding legend had been grafted onto Troy.

To Confessions (Confessiones)

Direct source, well documented.

Augustine recalls weeping as a schoolboy over Dido's death in Aeneid Book Four while caring nothing for his own soul. Virgil is the literary education he confesses and the model of feeling he rejects.

Where it came from

Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE
Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

Find “Aeneid (Aeneis)” on Amazon

c. 725 BCE

Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Ionia. written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy.

What it handed down

To Aeneid (Aeneis) (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The first six books follow the Odyssey's pattern of wandering, a shipwreck, a hero telling his story at a foreign court, and a visit to the dead. Aeneas even passes Polyphemus's island and picks up a sailor Odysseus left behind.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

Find “Odyssey” on Amazon

Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

Where it came from

Père Goriot (Le Père Goriot)

What it handed down

To Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) (1866)

Where it came from

King Lear

What it handed down

To Père Goriot (Le Père Goriot) (1835)

To The Robbers (Die Räuber)

Where it came from

The True Chronicle History of King Leir

What it handed down

To King Lear (c. 1606)

Where it came from

History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

What it handed down

To The True Chronicle History of King Leir (c. 1590)

Where it came from

Aeneid (Aeneis)

What it handed down

To Paradise Lost

To History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae) (c. 1136)

To Confessions (Confessiones)

Where it came from

Odyssey

What it handed down

To Aeneid (Aeneis) (19 BCE)

Where it came from

Share this lineage