Coverage of major movements and genres in the intellectual context of the times. Readings in Russian.

The seminar will survey Russian literary production and debate during the last decade of the eighteenth century and first forty years of the nineteenth, during which many of the founding texts of Russian poetry and prose were composed. Our goal will be to read a series of canonical works while also looking at the role of the margins and peripheries in shaping the essential contours of Russian literary modernity.



Topics will include:



* The sentimentalism of Karamzin and Radishchev, narratives of psychological affect and social injustice, and the birth of the modern Russian author

* The debates of the 1820’s-1830’s on poetic and literary language, the autonomy of art, political power, and the professionalization of the author

* The poetics and cultural politics of genre importation and genre combination

* The place of Ukraine and the Caucasus as a locale in Russian romanticism

* The correlation between the fantastic, the national and the social in the Russian short story

* Authorship and modalities of narrative voice in the short-story cycles of the 1830's and the early Russian novel

*The nature of the Romantic lyric and narrative epic

* The origins of the naturalist school and the representation of St. Petersburg

Prerequisites: Graduate standing; consent of instructor. Adequate knowledge of Russian.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.