3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course introduces students to some of the classics as well as lesser-known masterpieces of 19th century Russian literature, beginning with Russian Romanticism in relation to European literary movements such as French Sentimentalism, British Romanticism, and German Idealism, and ending with Russian Realism. We will study Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin (1833), his short story “The Queen of Spades” (1834), Mikhail Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time (1840), and Ivan Turgenev’s novella Faust (1856). We will devote the second part of the course to close readings and cultural as well as philosophical interpretation of works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy: Dostoevsky’s earlier unfinished bildungsroman Netochka Nezvanova (1849), Tolstoy’s early trilogy Childhood, Adolescence, Youth (1857) as well as the first novel Dostoevsky wrote after his mock execution and Siberian exile, namely Notes from the House of the Dead (1862), which pairs well with Tolstoy’s later works “The Kreutzer Sonata” (1889) and Father Sergius (1898) in dealing with topics like isolation, violence against women, and struggles of self-realization . The course examines Russian modernity and national identity vis-à-vis Europe and explores the following key questions: the Russian novel’s evolution, its role in 19th-century politics, society, and Russian writers’ engagement with European literature as well as thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. By the end, students will have a foundational understanding of 19th-century Russian literature’s history, philosophy, and cultural legacy and will have developed critical reading and writing skills. No prerequisites; knowledge of Russian is not required.