Comparative Literature Commons^™

Semiotics And Christian Discipleship In Fyodor Dostoevsky’S Crime And Punishment And Dietrich Bonhoeffer’S The Cost Of Discipleship, Jacob Pride

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The literary and philosophical theory of semiotics considers signs and symbols. Pragmatics is the branch of semiotics that explicates the practical effects of a given interpretation according to its context. Through analyzing the pragmatic context of Crime and Punishment, one can begin to uncover the depth of meaning that the novel delivers. In The Limits of Interpretation, Umberto Eco talks about what he calls "intersubjective meaning," which helps a particular interpretation of a text attain "a privilege over any other possible interpretation spelled out without the agreement of the community" (40). The particular intersubjective meaning that needs to …