Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: discourse of experience and alterity
Not offered in 1995
M Vladiv-Glover
8 or 12 points * 3 hours per week * First semester * Clayton * Prerequisites: Any second-year language or literature subject
The subject will explore the fictional and other writings of these two Russian realists, focusing on their representations of social institutions such as marriage, the family and the nation. These forms of representation will be viewed in the context of contemporary critical-theoretical concepts of `alterity' and `experience'. The movement from a poetics of representation to one of narrative super-structuralism will be demonstrated through the comparative analysis of the two authors, and by a comparison of the `classical' and the `late' Tolstoy.
Assessment: 8 points
Written (5000 words): 70% * Examination (1.5 hours): 30%
Assessment: 12 points
Written (7500 words): 70% * Examination (1.5 hours): 30%
Prescribed texts
Dostoevsky F M The double Penguin
Dostoevsky F M The brothers Karamazov Penguin
Tolstoy L N Anna Karenina Penguin
Tolstoy L N Kreutzer Sonata Penguin
Recommended texts
Armstrong J The unsaid Anna Karenina Macmillan, 1988
Møller P U Postlude to the Kreutzer Sonata Brill, 1988
Jung C G Memories, dreams, reflections Collins
Freud S The ego and the id (supplied)
Kristeva J Black sun: Depression and melancholia Columbia UP, 1989