CL 161 Literary Masters of Tsarist Russia

Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov. These are the titans of Russian literature, but also celebrated innovators in the broader landscape of world literature. This course introduces students to the major figures, trends, and historical contexts of 19th-century Russian literature, where literary experimentation, tense rivalries, and radical politics changed forever the future of Russian culture. We will examine periods of literary activity from Romanticism to the realist novel and end with Chekhov's mastery of the short story. [H, GM2, V, W]