Guilt and the novel: Crime and Punishment, The Trial and Atonement

We examine the emergence of guilt in the novel, as both an existential condition and a psychological reality, in three literary masterpieces: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Kafka's The Trial and Ian McEwan's Atonement. In addition to close reading of these texts, we examine the development of a cultural and literary history that led to the foregrounding of guilt as a fictional subject.