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Introduction to Russian Literature, III RUSS 25700/35700 (HUMA 24100,ISHU 23100,ISHU 33100) Foster
411, 4-2179 Office
hours: W 3-5; Th 1:30-2:30 Class
time: TTh 3-4:20 Class
location: Cobb 201 Option
1: All
readings and discussion will be in English. Option
2: Recommended
for students with sufficient experience in Russian. Attend the regular class
times and fulfill all requirements except the exam. Instead of the exam,
selected texts will be read in the original Russian and discussed in English
in a special, additional session with our graduate assistants, time to be
arranged. Texts will be supplied. Course
goals: 2.
To explore methods of analyzing literature. 3.
To study the history of Russian culture in the twentieth century Course
site: Required
texts (at Seminary Co-op): Maxim
Gorky, Chelkash and other stories (Dover Classics) Vladimir Mayakovsky, Bedbug
and Selected Poetry (Indiana) Evgeny Zamyatin, We (Avon) Mikhail Bulgakov, Master
and Margarita (Vintage) Vladimir Nabokov, The
Real Life of Sebastian Knight (Random House) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,
trans H.T. Willetts (Farrar, Straus Giroux) Victor Pelevin, 4 by
Pelevin, trans. Andrew Bloomfield (New Directions, 2001) Boris
Akunin, Winter Queen (Random House) Class
handouts:
Ilf and Petrov, Daniil Kharms, Prose
readings on Electronic Reserve: Ivan Bunin, “Light
Breathing,” The Gentleman from San Francisco,
and other stories,
trans. Bernard Guilbert Guerney (New York : Vintage Books, 1964) 110-118. Aleksandr Bogdanov,
excerpts from Engineer Menni, in Red
Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, eds. Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites,
trans. Charles Rougle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 141-192. Robert C. Williams, two
excerpts on Bogdanov from The Other
Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986) 34-41, 127-133. Richard Stites, “Social
daydreaming before the Revolution,” Revolutionary
Dreams (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 13-36. Alexander Blok,
“The People and the Intelligentsia” and “The Intelligentsia and the
Revolution,” Russian Intellectual
History: An Anthology, ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1966) 359-63. Mark D.
Steinberg, “Soviets in Power,” in Voices of Revolution, 1917 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2001) 251-281, 296-306. Maxim Gorky, “A. Blok”
from Fragments from My Diary (New
York: Praeger, 1972). Leon Trotsky, “Alexander
Blok,” “Futurism,” Literature and
Revolution (New York: Russell & Russell, 1957) 116-125, 126-161. Richard Stites, “Utopia in
Space,” Revolutionary Dreams (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989) 167-89. Belomor:
An Account of the Construction of the New Canal between the White Sea and the
Baltic Sea (New
York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1935) 17-23, 125-149, 337-344. Mikhail Sholokhov, “The
Fate of a Man.” Marc Raeff, “To Keep and
to Cherish: What Is Russian Culture?” in Russia
Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) 95-117. Varlam Shalamov, excerpts
from Kolyma Tales, trans. John Glad
(New York : W.W. Norton, 1980) pp.79-81, 135-138, 181-185. Joseph Brodsky, “Guide to
a Renamed City,” Less Than One: selected
essays
(New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986) 69-94 Eduard Limonov, “No Free
World,” in Michael Glenny and Norman Stone, The Other Russia (New York: Viking, 1991) 414-418. Tatyana Tolstaya, “The
Poet and the Muse,”
The Penguin book of new Russian
wrirting : Russia's Fleurs du mal, eds. Victor Erofeyev and Andrew
Reynolds (London; New York : Penguin Books, 1995) pp.278-291 Poetry readings on course site: Modernist poetry (symbolists,
acmeists, futurists) Aleksandr Blok, The Twelve,
“Scythians” Anna Akhmatova, Requiem Course Requirements: Paper:
Ideally about 2500 words (50% longer for graduate students) on a topic to be
developed with aid of more detailed instructions provided by April 11. Final
exam (for section 1): Based on identification, short answers and short essays
on topics covered in the readings and in class discussion. Thursday, 8 June,
1:30-3:30. Grading: Attendance 5% Class
participation 30% Paper 35% Preliminary Schedule Week 1: From Realism to Modernism 28
March: Introduction In-class
readings: Kharms, “Blue Notebook #1” (Handout); Il’f and Petrov, “How
Robinson Was Made” (Handout) Reading:
Gorky, “Chelkash” and “Twenty-Six Men and a Girl”; Bunin, “Light Breathing” 30
March Reading:
Symbolist and Acmeist poetry; Mayakovsky 53-135 Week 2: Symbolism, acmeism, futurism 4
April Reading:
Bogdanov, Engineer Menni; Williams,
The Other Bolsheviks 34-41, 137-33;
Stites, Revolutionary Dreams 13-36. 6
April Reading:
Mayakovsky 136-171; Blok, The Twelve;
Blok, “The People and the Intelligentsia” and “The Intelligentsia and the
Revolution” Week 3: First World War and
Revolution 11
April: Discuss paper Reading:
Gorky, “Alexander Blok”; Trotsky, “Alexander Blok” 13
April Reading:
Zamyatin, We; Stites, Revolutionary Dreams 167-89. Week 4: Dreaming the 1920s 18
April Reading:
Mayakovsky 172-303 (including The
Bedbug) 20
April Reading:
Excerpts from Belomor; Akhmatova, Requiem. Week 5: Stalinism and the Iron 1930s 25
April Reading:
Bulgakov, Master and Margarita 1-125. 27
April Reading:
Bulgakov, Master and Margarita 126-335. Week 6: Russian Culture at
mid-century 2
May Reading:
Sholokhov, “The Fate of Man” 4
May Reading:
Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight 3-118; Raeff, “To Keep and to Cherish: What Is Russian Culture?” Week 7: Emigration 9
May Reading:
Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight119-203. 11
May Reading:
Solzhenitsyn, One Day. Week 8: The Thaw 16
May Reading:
Shalamov, excerpts from Kolyma Tales. 18
May Reading:
Brodsky, ”Guide to a Re-named City”; Limonov, “No Free World”; Tolstaya, “The
Poet and the Muse”; Pelevin, 4 by
Pelevin. Week 9: Late- and Post-Soviet culture 23
May Reading:
Akunin, The Winter Queen. 25
May Reading:
Akunin, The Winter Queen. Week
10: The new millennium 30
May 1801-1825 Tsar
Alexander I 1812 Victory over Napoleon 1825 The Decembrist revolt 1809-1852 Life of
Nikolai Gogol 1818-1883
Life of Ivan Turgenev 1821-1881
Life of Fedor Dostoevsky 1825-1855 Tsar
Nicholas I 1828-1910
Life of Leo Tolstoy 1855-1881 Tsar
Alexander II 1861 Emancipation
of the serfs: era of Great Reforms 1860-1904 Life
of Anton Chekhov 1870-1953 Life of Ivan Bunin 1881-1894 Tsar Alexander III 1880-1921 Aleksandr Blok 1880-1934 Andrei Bely 1884-1937 Evgeny
Zamyatin 1885-1921 Velimir Khlebnikov 1889-1966 Anna
Akhmatova 1890-1960 Boris Pasternak 1891-1938 Osip Mandelstam 1891-1940 Mikhail Bulgakov 1893-1930 Vladimir Mayakovsky 1894-1917 Tsar Nicholas II (d. 1918) 1905 First Russian revolution: constitutional
reforms 1895-1925 Life of
Sergei Esenin 1899-1977 Life of Vladimir Nabokov 1905-1984 Life of Mikhail Sholokhov 1914-1918 World War I 1917 Feb./March
revolution installs Provisional Gov’t;
Oct 25/Nov. 7: Bolshevik revolution 1917 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
born 1917-1924 Vladimir
Lenin 1918-1922 Civil War 1921-1926 New Economic
Policy (NEP) 1924-1953 Joseph
Stalin 1929 First
Five-Year Plan; Industrialization and Collectivization 1933 Ivan
Bunin wins Nobel Prize
1934 First Congress
of the Union of Writers of the USSR 1937 Peak
of Stalinist purges 1941-1945 Great
Patriotic War 1948 Cultural
repressions under Andrei Zhdanov 1940-1995 Life of
Joseph Brodsky 1951 Tatyana
Tolstaya born 1956-1964 Nikita
Khrushchev / The Thaw 1958 Boris
Pasternak wins the Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago 1964-1981 Leonid
Brezhnev 1964- Viktor Pelevin born 1965 Mikhail
Sholokhov wins Nobel Prize 1971 Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn wins Nobel Prize for GULag Arch. 1985-1991 Mikhail
Gorbachev 1987 Joseph Brodsky wins Nobel Prize
1991 August: Dissolution of Soviet Union;
Leningrad becomes St. Petersburg 2003 300th anniversary of St.
Petersburg |