Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: discourse of experience and alterity
Proposed to be offered next in 1998
M Vladiv-Glover
8 or 12 points
* 3 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: Any second-year language or literature subject
Objectives On completion of the subject, students should have become acquainted with one major and several minor novels of the two Russian writers. They should be able to compare and contrast the poetics of Tolstoy's novel(s) to the poetics of Dostoevsky's novel(s) within the context of the theoretical writing of M M Bakhtin, Tz Todorov, Umberto Eco and others.
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
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