The lineage of Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

Following one thread, 3 works from Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) to The Last Day of a Condemned Man (Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné). Back to all 27 works

1. 1829

   The Last Day of a Condemned Man (Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné)

   Victor Hugo

   Bourbon Restoration. France. written in French.

   The first-person journal of a prisoner awaiting the guillotine, written as an argument against capital punishment.

   What it handed down

   To Les Misérables (1862)

   Thematic kinship, probable.

   Hugo's short book of 1829 attacked the death penalty through a prisoner's own voice. Les Misérables extends that argument against a penal system that makes criminals, now across a whole life rather than a single day.

   Where it came from

   The line stops here: hugo's impetus was witnessing public executions and the abolition debate rather than a literary model.

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