Russian Literature - Honors

In America and Americans, John Steinbeck proclaims, “If I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading [Russian literature]. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it." In this course, students consider the “why they did it and what they felt” of Russian and Soviet literature through the contexts of social change, justice and punishment, industrial and scientific progress, and Russian national identity. As such, this course looks closely at the history, religion, philosophy, and politics of this world power through the analysis of novels, poems, and plays that have become staples of Russian literature. Authors may include Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.