Comparative Literature 342 - SEM:DOUBLE VISION:HEROINE/VCTM

We examine how the iconic status of woman as moral redeemer and social pathbreaker is shadowed by a darker view of female self and sexuality in some representative works by male authors of the Russian 19th century. The primary texts are Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Turgenev’s On The Eve, Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?, Dostoevsky’s A Gentle Spirit and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and the Kreutzer Sonata. These novelistic narratives are supplemented with theoretical essays by Belinsky, J.S. Mill, Schopenhauer and Vladimir Soloviev.

Not open to first-years, sophomores