COMP 204 - Twentieth-Century Russian Literature: From Revolution to Perestroika

Institution:

Williams College

Subject:

Comparative Literature

Description:

Whether despite or precisely because of the enormous historical and political turbulence in twentieth-century Russia, the intensity of its cultural life was equally unprecedented. Over the period of nearly seventy years, Russian literature went through a number of major stages that defined its poetics and ideology: the Silver Age and its decline; the Revolution, the Civil War and the rise of Socialist Realism as the official literary method; the exodus of Russian writers abroad in the 1920s; the birth of a new proletarian type, worshiped by Soviet authors and mocked by the anti-Soviet ones; the Second World War; the Thaw and de-Stalinization, when the Gulag seemed to have floated to the surface; another wave of tightening of the regime during the "stagnation period," the dissident movement and the Cold War; another mass emigration to Europe, Israel and the U.S.; and finally -- the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the rise of Russian postmodernism. As we discuss these and other topics of twentieth-century Russian culture, we will find ourselves immersed into the mechanisms of literary humor and comicality (e.g., in Mikhail Zoshchenko's short stories and Ilf and Petrov's picaresque novel The Twelve Chairs), the elements of the supernatural (in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita), the ways of how Russian writers portray urban space (e.g., Moscow, in Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow to the End of the Line), and how Soviet history is reinvented when censorship is replaced with market economy (in Viktor Pelevin's Generation P). Literary texts will be supplemented with occasional film screenings. All readings and discussions are in English.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Seminar

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.williams.edu

Phone Number:

(413) 597-3131

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Four-one-four plan

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