COMP 203
Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature in Translation
Last Offered Fall 2013
Division I
Cross-listed COMP 203 / RUSS 203
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

Whereas 18th-century Russian literature was largely derivative and imitative, 19th-century Russian literature –literature of The Golden Age– developed into a distinct national literature. It acquired its own style, developed along its own trajectory, and engaged with local social and political topics. This course will offer a survey of major works of Russian 19th-century fiction from Pushkin, the “father” of modern Russian literature, through Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Primary materials will be supplemented by readings in cultural and intellectual history (Chaadaev, Belinsky, Herzen, Pisarev, and Dobrolyubov) to help us better understand the milieu in which 19th-century Russian literature developed. The course will consist of short introductory lectures and discussions devoted to analyzing stylistic, cultural, and ideological idiosyncrasies of our primary texts. In addition to examining each author’s distinctive style and contribution to Russian and world literature, we will explore a number of critical themes that have come to define the 19th-century Russian intellectual discourse: the rise of the Russian Empire and its encounter with East and West; the haunting duality of Russian urban and rural life; and the role of the Russian nobility and intelligentsia in Russia’s cultural and socio-political transformation.