The lineage of Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

Following one thread, 3 works from Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) to The Overcoat (Shinel'). Back to all 27 works

1. 1842

   The Overcoat (Shinel')

   Nikolai Gogol

   Russian Golden Age. Russia. written in Russian.

   A meek Petersburg copying clerk saves for a new overcoat, is robbed of it, and dies after being humiliated by a 'Person of Consequence'.

   What it handed down

   To Notes from Underground (Zapiski iz podpolya) (1864)

   Thematic kinship, probable.

   Gogol's humiliated Petersburg clerk is the ancestor of the Underground Man, who is also a minor official obsessed with rank and slights. The Underground Man's months of plotting to bump into an officer on Nevsky Prospect, even buying a new collar for it, rework Gogol's comedy of clothes and status.

   Where it came from

   The line stops here: gogol worked from an office anecdote and hagiographic naming; minor branch.

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