While reading from classics by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy, we will investigate the role of the Russian folklore tradition in the development of these authors' works, and transferal of such works to the film medium, which both illuminated the traditional literary canon and broke new ground under the influence of modernism. Our overall emphasis will be on the ways in which elements of traditional Russian culture are given voice through literature, art, and film. Twentieth-Century Russian Literary Masterpieces . Throughout this course we will focus on the manner in which authors create literary works in response to such historical events. The authors we will be reading include Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich, and Aitmatov.
All reading is in English translation.
Open to Freshmen. These courses are designed as the initial courses students take after qualification in Russian, and are conducted mainly in Russian. Considerable guidance is provided, however, and there is no presumption of fluency. The goals of the courses are to introduce students to Russian literature in the original, to sample differing literary styles, and to accomplish both with minimal recourse to English in class. Several short papers in Russian and English will be assigned.