This course examines twentieth-century Russian literary and cultural theory in its relationship with its Western counterpart. Emphasis will be placed on the relationship between literature and the cultural environment. We will discuss issues such as literature as device, literature in its institutions, poetic form and play, the theory of narrative and the search for a masterplot, the semiotics of literature, culture as text, dialogue and the novel, Marxist criticism, postmodernism and Stalinist ideology, and the mythology of everyday life in Russia and America.
All texts read in translation.
We will use Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground as primary text, upon which various theoretical approaches will be brought to bear and evaluated.