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Academic Year 2004/2005


Fiction as History
RUSS 264 SP

Crosslistings:
REES 264

Modern Russian literature combines historical writing and fiction in interesting ways. Some writers (including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Mandelstam, and Solzhenitsyn) have written separate, parallel historical and fictional accounts of the same historical episodes. Some (including Turgenev and Tolstoy) have developed genres that are at the boundary of fiction and documentary. Others (including Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov) have combined "realistic" narratives of contemporary life with abstract, mythic models of history: apocalyptic, utopian, dystopian, idyllic. Even lyric poetry normally reserved for the expression of private experience has become oracular in 20th-century poets like Blok, Mayakovsky, and Brodsky. This course will introduce students to Russian literature's "obsession with history", to the genres in which it is expressed, and to the concepts of human experience created by these genres.

MAJOR READINGS

Pushkin, EVGENY ONEGIN, HISTORY OF PUGACHEV, CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER
Tolstoy, WAR AND PEACE (selections), HADZHI MURAD
Aksakov, FAMILY CHRONICLE
Herzen, MY PAST AND THOUGHTS (selections)
Turgenev, FATHERS AND CHILDREN
Dostoevsky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Chekhov, THE CHERRY ORCHARD
Mayakovsky, CLOUD IN TROUSERS
Mandelstam, THE NOISE OF TIME, EGYPTIAN STAMP
Bulgakov, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
Shvarts, THE DRAGON
Solzhenitsyn, THE RED WHEEL (selections)
Petrushevskaya, THE TI ME: NIGHT

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Extensive reading, e-mail exchange of discussion topics, active participation in class discussions, short papers, final exam.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA RUSS    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005


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