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Reading Stories
RUSS240 SP

Crosslistings: REES240

How does narrative form create meaning? Many of the best works of 19th century Russian literature are stories which reflect upon the nature of story-telling and the capacity of stories to represent truth. In the twentieth century, Russian literary theoreticians like Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, and Bakhtin joined fiction writers in developing a powerful and useful critical vocabulary for describing and understanding narrative. Their work led them and writers of their generation into innovative experiments in short fiction. This course looks at the creative interplay between story writing and thinking about stories in modern Russian literature. The reading for the course will be short stories and short novels by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tols toy, Dostoevsky, Checkhov, Mandelstam, Zoshchenko, Babel, Tsvetaeva, Nabokov, Platonov, and Petrushevskaia.

MAJOR READINGS

V. Erlich, RUSSIAN FORMALISM L. Matejka and K. Pomarska, READINGS IN RUSSIAN POETICS M. Bakhtin, PROBLEMS OF DOSTOEVSKY'S POETICS R. Barthes, S/Z T. Todorov, THE POETICS OF PROSE N. Frye, ANATOMY OF CRITICISM Y. Lotman, STRUCTURE OF THE ARTISTIC TEXT Stories and short novels by Boccacio, Cervantes, Sterne, Pushkin, Balzac, Melville, Chekhov, Joyce, Kafka, Nabokov.

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Four or five short papers, final exam

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

Additional Requirements and/or Comments not known

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

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

Prerequisites: NONE

Last Updated on MAR-24-2000

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