WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2010-2011       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Reading Stories
RUSS 240
Fall 2010 not offered
Crosslisting: REES 240, RULE 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, Jakobson, 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, Platonov, and Petrushevskaia. We will also read articles and selected chapters on theory by Iser, Hirsch, Chatman, Booth, Culler, White, Caws, Bakhtin, Lotman, Frye, and Jakobson.

Essential Capabilities: Intercultural Literacy, Interpretation
This course raises the question: how can we in our culture, our period, understand stories written in other cultures, other periods. It answers this question in two ways: 1) by using our theoretical and literary readings to identify meaningful structures intrinsic to all stories; and 2) by providing insights into modern Russian social/cultural history that will enable students to understand our literary readings in their original context.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA RUSS
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (REES-MN)

Last Updated on DEC-10-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459