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CS92PROD
Tolstoy Part One: War and Peace and Other Works
REES 290
Fall 2022
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: COL 276, RULE 290, RUSS 290, WLIT 263

Lev Tolstoy (1828 -1910) lived longer than any of the other major nineteenth-century Russian writers. His career began in the 1850s, as Russian literature was moving out of the age of Romanticism, and extended into the twentieth century, as modernism was becoming the dominant mode of Russian literature. This course will deal with the first half of Tolstoy's career, beginning with his experiments in the narration of consciousness ("A History of Yesterday" and Childhood) and in the narration of the experience of war (Sevastopol Stories). The main part of the course will be devoted to his epic War and Peace, in which the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 serves as the vehicle for considering the nature of Russian nationhood, the place of the individual in large historical events, and the very essence of how history should be narrated. Each of Tolstoy's best works is an innovative formal experiment that creates an unprecedented, new type of novel. This course will study how Tolstoy's writings both responded to and transcended their times by creating new novelistic forms and new truths within those forms. The course will be conducted in English.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA REES
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (REES-MN)(REES-Lang/Lit/C)
Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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