WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2013-2014       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Reading Stories: Great Short Works from Tolstoy to Petrushevskaya
RUSS 240
Fall 2013
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: REES 240, RULE 240

This course is designed to help students improve their writing through the close reading and analysis of short stories and novellas by Russian masters of the form. In each class we will discuss one literary work. Students will be asked to bring to each class their ideas on how to construct an argument that could be developed into a written interpretation of the work. These discussions, along with work on English grammar and style as elucidated by Strunk & White and R. L. Trask, will inform students' own writing (four 5-page papers) on stories not discussed in class. We will read works in the realist tradition from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century that include Tolstoy's novellas of Cossacks and adulterous members of the nobility, Chekhov's subtle psychological tales, Bunin's reflections from exile on a lost Russia, Babel's stories of the Civil War and of Jewish Odessa, Bulgakov's sketches of life as a country doctor, and Petrushevskaya's modern stories of the tortured lives of women in the late Soviet period.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA REES
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (REES-MN)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on MAR-19-2024
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