2021 Fall
SLAVIC 133 001 - LEC 001
The Novel in Russia and the West
The Many Faces of the 19th-Century Novel
Lyubov Golburt
Class #:31984
Units: 4
Instruction Mode:
In-Person Instruction
Offered through
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Current Enrollment
Total Open Seats:
3
Enrolled: 15
Waitlisted: 0
Capacity: 18
Waitlist Max: 3
No Reserved Seats
Hours & Workload
3 hours of instructor presentation of course materials per week, and 9 hours of outside work hours per week.
Final Exam
TUE, DECEMBER 14TH
08:00 am - 11:00 am
Wheeler 220
Other classes by Lyubov Golburt
Course Catalog Description
Study of major Russian and Western (European and American) 19th- and 20th-century novels, and their interrelations. Variable reading list. See Department announcement for description.
Class Description
The novel emerged as the principal literary genre in 19th-century Europe and has continued to dominate the literary market in Europe and North America ever since. What were the formal elements as well as social and psychological concerns of novelistic narrative in the period of its greatest ascendancy? Focusing on a selection of novels from the German, English, French, and Russian traditions, this course examines the many guises the novel assumed in the process of its becoming, over the course of the 19th century, the central genre within which key social, political, and aesthetic issues of its time could be deliberated.
All novels considered in this course are markedly experimental. Each showcases a different dimension of the novel genre: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) is a sentimental epistolary novel; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), an epistolary Gothic horror novel that also lays the groundwork for the emergence of science fiction; Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1823-1831), an ironic and fragmentary novel in verse; Gustave Flaubert’s, Madame Bovary (1856), a novel that establishes the model of modern realist narration; and finally Leo Tolstoy’s magisterial War and Peace (1865-1869), a text that can be loosely termed a historical novel while raising crucial questions about the very premises of what it means to be historical and novelistic.
Book List (specified editions are highly recommended; print versions preferred to digital):
Goethe, The Sorrow of Young Werther, trans. David Constantine; Oxford World Classics 978-0199583027
Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. J. Paul Hunter; Norton Critical Editions, 978-0-393-92793-1
Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. James Falen; Oxford University Press, 978-0199538645
Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen; Norton Critical Editions, 978-0393979176
Tolstoy, War and Peace; trans Louise and Aylmer Maude; Norton Critical Editions, 978-0393966473
Rules & Requirements
Repeat Rules
Requirements class fulfills
Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth
Reserved Seats
Current Enrollment
No Reserved Seats
Textbooks & Materials
See class syllabus or https://calstudentstore.berkeley.edu/textbooks for the most current information.
Guide to Open, Free, & Affordable Course Materials
Associated Sections
None