Abstract
Petersburg in nineteenth-century Russian literature is premised on its evanescent quality. This chapter approaches this issue in three ways: first, I examine Raskolnikov’s troubled consciousness in Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment. The city’s representation is filtered through the hero’s eyes, suggesting that the understanding of the city is impossible with the understanding of his perception. Second, I will look at the eclectic architecture of St Isaac’s Cathedral, a landmark situating at the centre of the city which fascinates the hero. I will show that the building, instead of a pure expression of classicism, is a mixture of various styles, thereby disconfirming his desire to become a tsar
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Fung, P. (2016). Petersburg on the Threshold. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_11
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