MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

RUS3410

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: discourse of experience and alterity

M Vladiv-Glover

Synopsis 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 U P, 1989