Reading Stories
RUSS 240
Spring 2009 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
REES 240 |
How does narrative form create meaning? Many of the best works of 19th-century Russian literature reflect upon the nature of storytelling and the capacity of stories to represent truth. In the 20th century, Russian literary theoreticians like Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin, and Lotman joined fiction writers in developing a powerful and useful critical vocabulary for describing and understanding narrative. Their work led them and writers of their generation into innovative experiments in short fiction. This course looks at the creative interplay between story writing and thinking about stories in modern Russian literature. We will read short stories and short novels by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Kharms, Platonov, and Petrushevskaia. We will also read articles and selected chapters on theory by Iser, Hirsch, Chatman, Booth, Bakhtin, Lotman, Frye, and Jakobson. |
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Essential Capabilities:
We focus throughout the course on how we can understand literature from a different culture and a different historical period: how can we understand such texts on their own, original terms; and how can we translate those original meanings into our own terms? The primary focus of this course is on how we understand literary texts as we read. Our theoretical readings identify the structures intrinsic to literary narrative that shape our understanding as we read.
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA RUSS |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (REES-MN) |
Major Readings:
Pushkin, "Queen of Spades," THE BELKIN TALES
Gogol, "Ivan Shponka and his Aunt," THE NOSE
Turgenev, FIRST LOVE
Dostoevsky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Tolstoy, DEATH OF IVAN ILYCH, MASTER AND MAN
Chekhov, "Lady with the Dog," "Anna on the Neck," "The Name-Day Party,"
Zoshchenko, "Victoria Kazimirovna," "The Aristocrat," "The Bathhouse"
Babel, "How it was Done in Odessa"
Bulgakov, THE HEART OF A DOG
Platonov, POTUDAN RIVER
Nabokov, NABOKOV'S DOZEN
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Examinations and Assignments:
Four short papers, final exam |
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