COMP 207
Tolstoy: The Major Novels
Last Offered Spring 2012
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed RUSS 210
This course is not offered in the current catalog

This tutorial will focus on Lev Tolstoy’s four novelistic masterpiece–War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, and Hadji Murat–placing them in their appropriate historical, social, and philosophical context. For each week of class, students will read a significant portion of a novel by Tolstoy, as well as a selection of secondary literature taken from those works that inspired the author, reactions that arose at the time of the novel’s publication, and scholarship that seeks to explain the power and enduring significance of these novels. Students will meet with the professor in pairs, with one student writing a five-page paper for each class session and the other student providing a critique of the paper. For those students without Russian language skills, all works will be read in English translation. For those students who have completed at least three years of college-level Russian, all primary readings, a significant portion of secondary readings, discussion, and writing assignments will be completed in Russian.