War and Peace:
Tolstoy & the Epic Voice
Fall 2012
Oct 2 - 4 The Search for Authentic Experience and Representation
Tues -: Introductions; selections from Tolstoy’s early diaries “History of Yesterday,” “Childhood” (we will look at these together in class)
Background: Chernyshevsky, "L.N. Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, and Military Tales (Chalk, 13 pp.); Eikhenbaum, “Experiments in the Novel” (Chalk, 14 pp.)
Thur - The Realities of War: Sevastopol Stories, (TSF, 3-43); "The Raid" (Chalk, 31 pp.)
Background: Morson - "The Reader as Voyeur: Tolstoy and the Poetics of Didactic Fiction" (TSF, 379-393 pp.)
Oct 9-11 The Matrix of the Epic
Tues - "Family Happiness" (TSF, 54-117); “Three Deaths” (TSF, 44-53)
Background: Kisseleff - "Idyll and Ideal: Aspects of Sentimentalism in Tolstoy's Family Happiness" (Chalk, 10 pp.); Poggioli - "Tolstoy's Domestic Happiness: Beyond Pastoral Love" (TSF, 398-413)
Thur. The Cossacks (Chalk)
Steiner - "Tolstoy and Homer" (Chalk, 8 pp.); Berlin - "Tolstoy and Enlightenment" (Chalk, 24 pp.)
Oct 16-18 Putting it all together
Tues. War and Peace, Vol 1, Part 1 (3-111)
Background: Eikhenbaum - "The Genre of War and Peace"(W&P, 1126-1129); Feuer - "The Transition from the Early Manuscripts to Book I, Part I." (Chalk, 33 pp.)
Thur. – Vol. 1, Part 2 (War and Peace, 112-201)
Background: Edmund Wilson, “The Original of Tolstoy’s Natasha” (Chalk, 6 pp.)
Oct 23-25 Spreading the Canvas
Tues. – Vol. 1, Part 3 (W&P, 202-296)
Background: Akhshamurov - Review of "1805," "Universal Labor" (1867) (Chalk, 9 pp.)
Thur. – Vol 2., Parts 1 & 2 (W&P, 297-417)
Background: Victor Shklovsky - "Details in War and Peace" (W&P, 1114-1125)
Oct 30 – Nov 2 Rendering the Fatherland
Tues – Vol. 2, Parts 3 & 4 (W&P, 418-534)
Background: Lidia Ginzburg - "Causal Conditionality" (W&P, 1167-1178)
Thur – Vol. 2, Part 5 (W&P, 535-600)
Background: Gustafson - "States of Human Awareness" (W&P, 1146-1155)
Nov 6-8 Narrative Conquests: Overcoming Napoleon (and Kutuzov)
Tues – Vol. 3, Part 1 (W&P, 603-681)
Background: Gary Saul Morson - Narrative and Creative Potentials in War and Peace (Chalk)
Thur – Vol. 3, Part 2 (W&P, 682-820)
Nov 13-15 Narrative Inquests
Tues - Vol. 3, Part 3 (W & P, 821-932)
Background: Jones - "A Man Speaking to Men: The Narratives of War and Peace" (Chalk, 22 pp.)
Thur – Vol. 4, Parts 1 & 2 (W&P, 935-1030)
Nov 20 Taking it all apart
Tues - Vol. 4, Parts 3 & 4 (W&P, 1031-1125)
Russian perspectives on War and Peace: Pisarev, Turgenev, Strakhov, Leontiev (Chalk, 11 pp.)
Thurs – Thanksgiving Holiday
Nov 27-29 Searching for the Meaning of Art
Tues - Epilogues (W&P, 1129-1215); Isaiah Berlin - The Hedgehog and the Fox (Selections, Chalk, 8 pp.)
Background: Tolstoy - “Some Words About War and Peace” (W&P, 1089-1097);
Thur –“Father Sergius," (GSW, 501-546); What is Art? (Selections, 24 pp.); "Confession" (Chalk, 41 pp.)
Background: Parthe - "Tolstoy and the Geometry of Fear" (TSF, 413-420); “Introduction to the Works of Guy de Maupassant” (Chalk, 22 pp.); Postlude to The Kreutzer Sonata” (Chalk, 11 pp.)
Dec 4 Death of the Author
Tues - "Alyosha the Pot" (TSF, 270-275); "I Cannot Remain Silent" (Chalk, 15 pp.); Hadji Murat (Chalk); Tolstoy's Death
Background: "The First Step" (Chalk, 38 pp.); The Gospel in Brief (Chalk, ~40 pp.); LeBlanc – “Unpalatable Pleasures: Tolstoy, Food, and Sex” (Chalk, 29 pp.) "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (Chalk, 17 pp.) from Calendar of Wisdom (Chalk, ~ 30 pp.);
** Final papers due by 4:00 p.m. on Wed., Dec 12 in my box in Foster (404) or in my office (Foster 402).