This Course will treat Russian literature of the 20th Century. In order to establish the context, we will begin slightly before the beginning of the twentieth century. We will begin with the rise of Modernism with Chekhov and Bunin and progress to the Silver Age of Russian culture. From there we will discuss the Revolution and it's effect on literature and the arts. Socialist Realism of the thirties to the sixties will then be followed by the period of the Thaw and literary dissent. From there we will reach the Perestroika period of 1985-1991 and finish with Post-Soviet literature up to the current day.

Your grade in this course will be based on:

• Two major exams - a midterm and a final. - 20% each (40% total)
• One presentation of a writer or work - this will be done in pairs or small groups 5%
• One 4-6 page paper - 10%
• One 10-page (minimum) paper - 15%
• Weekly journals. - these will be collected every week as a means of verifying that you are keeping up with the reading. Your writing style will not be graded in these journals -- I just want to read your ideas as you are engaging with the assigned readings. You will not be judged on content or style, but only on the fact that you are ruminating on the works that we read. It is not important that you like what we read. Your view of the work will not alter your grade on the journal writing. In other words, don't worry if you hate my favorite author. I may well hate your favorite author, but I want to hear reasoned arguments for why you hate them. I am primarily interested in the fact that you think about what you are reading. 15%
• Classroom participation and discussion - This is a significant portion of this course. I expect all persons in this class to participate daily in the discussion of the literary works. Even if you don't think you have anything brilliant to add to the day's discussion, your observations may inspire brilliance in another. 15%

Please note that a significant percentage of your grade will be based on the journals and the classroom participation. This is indeed meant to be a threat to encourage you to discuss in class and take the journals seriously.

Office Hours, Semester 1: Monday 8 - 9, Tuesday 10-11, Wednesday 1:30-2:30

9/5 FRIDAY
Introduction to the course and an overview of Russian literature up to the 1880's.

For Monday - Read Chekhov "The Death of a Clerk", "Vanka", "Sleepy" and "Ward No. 6". Read through Julian Graffy's translation of A.P. Chudakov's article, "The Poetics of Chekhov: The Sphere of Ideas" from New Literary History, Volume 9, Issue 2, Soviet Semiotics and Criticism: An Anthology (Winter, 198\78), 353-380

9/8 MONDAY
Tolstoy, the end of the 19th Century and looking ahead to Modernism

For Wednesday - Read Chekhov "The Black Monk", "Anna on the Neck", "Man in a Case", "The Darling" Read through Gleb Struve's article "On Chekhov's Craftsmanship: The Anatomy of a Story" from Slavic Review, Volume 20, Issue 3 (Oct. 1961), 465-476.

9/10 WEDNESDAY
Chekhov, the short story writer.

For Friday - Brown: Poetry by Blok and the excerpt by Bely. (Pp. 76-89) and selected poetry in class.

9/12 FRIDAY
Symbolism and the Russian Moderne

For Monday - Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard” Acts I and II - There are many copies in the library. It can also be found on-line at: http://www.drama21c.net/writers/chekhov/cherryorchard.htm though the translation is a bit on the antiquated side.

9/15 MONDAY
Chekhov, dramaturg - forerunner of modernism.

For Wednesday - Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard” to the end

9/17 WEDNESDAY
Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

For Friday - Nadezhda Teffi: “Time” (Brown) and http://www.ropnet.ru/mylene/taffy.htm
Bunin, “Light Breathing”(Brown) and “The Gentleman from San Francisco”

9/19 FRIDAY
Bunin and Teffi. The approach of the Revolution.

For Monday - Proffer, Russian Literature of the 1920's: an Anthology, pp.385-405
Brown, 103-115, 169-186

9/22 MONDAY
Acmeism and Futurism

For Wednesday - Proffer, 415-450, 461-466, 373-384

9/24 WEDNESDAY
Revolution and literature

For Friday - Proffer, Mayakovsky “The Bedbug”, pp. 467-502

9/26 FRIDAY
CLASS TODAY WILL MEET IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHY ROOM OF THE LIBRARY
The Twenties

For Monday - Review the poetry of Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelshtam, Esenin and Mayakovsky

9/29 MONDAY
The Twenties in verse

For Wednesday - Brown, Zamyatin “The Cave”, 90-102
Proffer, Zamyatin We, pp. 3-49

10/1 Wednesday
The Twenties - Prose
Zamyatin’s “The Cave”

For Friday - Proffer, Zamyatin’s We, pp. 49-88
Terras, 562-565

10/3 Friday
Begin the discussion of We

For Monday - Proffer, Zamyatin’s We, pp. 88-139
Proffer, Babel, pp. 217-224
Brown, Babel, pp. 203-204, 210-230

10/6 Monday
Continue discussion of We
Babel

For Wednesday - Proffer, Zoshchenko, pp 289-308, Ilf and Petrov, pp. 371-374

10/8 Wednesday
Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov and introduction to Bulgakov

For Friday - Bulgakov, "The Heart of a Dog" - the first half.

10/10 Friday
Bulgakov

For Monday - Bulgakov's "The Heart of a Dog" to the end.

Also - the Russian poet, Evgenij Evtushenko, will be at Carleton College on October 14th and 15th. We have been invited to some of those activities. Please read the packet of his poems so that we can go to some of the lectures knowledgeable about this poet.

10/13 Monday
Intro to Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog

Read through Margaret M. Bullitt's article "Toward a Marxist Theory of Aesthetics: The Development of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union" from Russian Review, Volume 35, Issue 1 (Jan., 1976), 53-76.

10/15 Wednesday
Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog

For Friday - Sholokhov’s “Fate of a Man”. Read Maurice Friedberg's article "Socialist Realism: Twenty-Five Years Later" from American Slavic and East European Review, Volume 19, Issue 2 (Apr., 1960), 276-287. Finish 1st Paper to hand in on Friday

10/17 Friday Introduction to Socialist Realism

For Wednesday after break - Brown, Nadezhda Mandelstan, Daniil Kharms, 403-412

10/20 Monday -

FALL BREAK

10/22 Wednesday
Village Prose and the Thaw

For Friday - Prepare for MIDTERM
For Monday - Brown, Shalamov, 418-434, Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 1st 1/2 of novel

10/24 Friday

Over everthing UP TO Socialist Realism.

For Monday - Read last half of Solzhenitsyn.

10/27 Monday
Prison camp literature

For Wednesday - Brown, Sinyavsky “Pkhents”, 481-506, Nabokov Pale Fire

10/29 Wednesday
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

For Friday - Nabokov, Pale Fire

10/31 Friday
Sinyavsky and dissident literature

For Monday - Nabokov, Pale Fire

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11/3 Monday
Russian emigre literature and Nabokov

For Wednesday - Nabokov, Pale Fire to end

11/5 Wednesday
Nabokov

For Friday - Brown, Kazakov, 507-538, Voinovich, pp. 572-599

11/7 Friday
Nabokov

For Monday - Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line to pg. 65

11/10 Monday
Stagnation

For Wednesday - Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line to 125

11/12 Wednesday
Perestroika: Finding a literary voice

For Friday - Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line to end

11/14 Friday
Erofeev

For Monday - Yerofeev, “Soviet Literature: In Memoriam”, Yerofeev, “”Russia’s Fleurs du Mal”

11/17 Monday
Yerofeev

For Wednesday - Sorokin, “Next Item on the Agenda”, “A Business Proposition”
Hand in drafts of final papers!!!!!

11/19 Wednesday
Sorokin

For Friday - Pelevin, “Hermit and Six Toes” and “Nika”

11/21 Friday
Pelevin

For Monday - Pelevin, “Mid-Game”, “Life of Shed No. XII”

11/24 Monday
Pelevin

For Monday after break - Pelevin, “The Blue Lantern”, “The Tambourine of the Upper World”

11/26 Wednesday - BEGINNING OF FALL BREAK

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12/1 Monday
Pelevin

FINAL PAPERS and Presentations...

12/3 Wednesday
Pelevin and Presentations

Prepare to hand in FINAL PAPERS

12/8 Monday
How to respond to a lost country and generation...

For final - REVIEW

12/10 Wednesday
Wrap up course.

For final - REVIEW

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15% of your grade.

As stated above: these will be collected every week as a means of verifying that you are keeping up with the reading. Your writing style will not be graded in these journals -- I just want to read your ideas as you are engaging with the assigned readings. You will not be judged on content or style, but only on the fact that you are ruminating on the works that we read. It is not important that you like what we read. Your view of the work will not alter your grade on the journal writing. In other words, don't worry if you hate my favorite author. I may well hate your favorite author, but I want to hear reasoned arguments for why you hate them. I am primarily interested in the fact that you think about what you are reading.

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10% of your grade.

This multi-media enhanced "paper" is 4 to 6 pages long. You should take a work you've enjoyed (or hated) and analyze that work within a cultural context. This can be a literary analysis, a contextual analysis or some other form of analysis. While this paper is not as in-depth as the subsequent long paper, I want your analysis to be as sophisticated as you are able to make it. I also want you to include references to images, audio files, cultural references, etc. that will demonstrate the cultural context in which the work appeared. For example, if one is writing on Chekhov, one might include paintings by Serov that also bridge the gap between realism and modernism. Images from original productions of Chekhov's works could illustrate the context of the Moscow Art Theater. These multi-media illustrations should be embedded in the text which can be submitted to me electronically. We will put these up on the class web site for others to look at, so your work will have a broader audience than just myself. Do not assume that because the paper is short that your commentary on the work in question can be superficial. Follow the guidelines in the Helpful Hints handout below.

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15% of your grade

This paper is a minimum of 10 pages long. Follow closely the suggestions in the Helpful Hints handout below. Pay especially close attention to finding and creating a productive thesis. I will be glad to help you with this. This paper should be about one work, a comparison of works (either all Russian or Russian and some other literature), the writing of a particular author (NOT a biography), or a particular theme as it is treated by one or various authors. These papers will be graded both on content and style. In other words, if you make a fine paper with a useable thesis and good citations and numbered pages, etc, but what you have to say about the works is not very sophisticated or innovative, you will not get a top grade. Likewise, if you come up with brilliant ideas, but have not numbered pages, or cited references, etc. you will also not receive a top grade. YOU MUST INCLUDE A BIBLIOGRAPHY. You will hand in a draft of this paper. Receiving a draft back with few comments about your paper does not guarantee a top grade. The draft review is basically a review of writing style and mechanics.

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You will need to give a 5 minute presentation about your paper to the rest of the class. This will be informal and I just want you to relate the works you analyzed, state your primary thesis and explain the general thrust of the paper and any conclusions you reached in the process.

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5% of your grade.

This will be a 15 minute presentation on a writer or major work that we have not been able to read in class. In this way, you will all benefit from having information about these major works or writers without having even more to read. The small groups will be assigned during the first week or two of classes and then the dates when the groups will present will be assigned to chronologically fit in with the regular readings on the syllabus. I expect all members of the group to work together on this project, to all read the assigned work and to present to the class the salient details of the work or writer and place them within a literary, historical and cultural context. In other words, you are to "teach" your group's material to the rest of the class. You can do this in any way you want - lecture, powerpoint, puppet show, opera, whatever. Please try to make it somewhat entertaining as well as informative.

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• SPELL CHECKER

ODE TO A SPELL CHECKER

I have a spelling checker
I disk covered four my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot see.

Eye ran this poem threw it.
Your sure real glad two no.
Its very polished in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a blessing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

Each frays comes posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore wee rote with checkers
Hour spelling was inn deck line,
Butt now when wee dew have a laps,
Wee are not maid too wine.

And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
There are know faults in awl this peace,
Of nun eye am a wear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

That's why eye brake in two averse
Caws Eye dew want too please.
Sow glad eye yam that aye did bye
This soft wear four pea seas.

Anonymous

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• HELPFUL
  HINTS

1. Pick a topic that interests you. For the most part, it will be better to offer an in-depth analysis of a small problem than a general discussion of large, over-arching issues. If you can’t think of a topic, go back to a text that interests you, and read it (or parts of it) over several times until you find some point, problem, or issue that is of particular interest to you. It might be helpful here to concentrate on those parts of the text that you find most difficult, those parts that you do not understand immediately. This might turn out to supply you with a very interesting paper topic. If all this doesn’t work, come speak to me and I’ll help you find a topic.

2. Avoid summary!!! Your paper should be structured like an argument, and your argument should be grounded in close reading and analysis of passages from the text you are discussing. Read the text several times very carefully before you begin writing. Pay careful attention to the actual language of the passages you are analyzing. What particular metaphors are being used, and what are their implications? What sort of narrative perspective(s) or narrative strategies do you see in the text, and how are they articulated? Do not shy away from contradictions. What contradictions do you see in the text, and in what ways might they be resolved – or in what ways not?

3. Remember, what you want to talk about is the text! You should neither speculate about the author’s intentions nor write about your own reactions to the text.

4. Give your paper a title. The title of your paper should, of course, be different from the text you are discussing.

5. Cite sources. If you use secondary literature, it should not constitute the vast majority of your argument. This paper is supposed to represent original work and thought. You must cite all primary and secondary literature and all reference works with foot or end notes naming the author, title, publisher, year and place of publication, and page numbers. In text citations may subsequently be short form). For proper reference format, consult the MLA Handbook or The Chicago Manual of Style.

6. Before you begin writing the paper, make sure you can answer the following three questions in writing:

• a) What is the thesis you wish to argue?
• b) What sections or passages of the text will you focus on in making your argument? Why are you picking these particular passages?
• c) What is the conclusion you ultimately wish to arrive at? (This may, of course, not be the actual conclusion that you come to, but it’s helpful to have some idea of where you are heading before you start to write.)

As your ideas often change during the writing process, you may find it helpful to try to answer these questions again once you are in the middle of writing.

7. ONCE YOU HAVE A THESIS– MAKE SURE THAT IT IS SUCCINCTLY STATED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PAPER AND THEN KEEP THE BODY OF THE PAPER FOCUSED ON THAT THESIS. DO NOT WRITE A PAPER WITHOUT A CLEAR THESIS.

8. Number your pages after the first or title page.

9. Do not feel that you have to do all this completely on your own. Discuss your topic with me before beginning, and during the writing process, come speak to me or email me about your ideas and how you are developing them.

10. Finally, avoid lists! This is one of my pet peeves. I hate reading papers that degenerate into this happened, then this happened, and then this, and then this, and then this... It is not a productive way of presentation of material. I will be happy to work with you to find other means to convey and present your ideas.

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