109-124 Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Semester

Subject Description

The subject will examine two seminal Russian authors, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, in the context of the European literary and philosophical tradition. Dostoevsky's fiction, focusing on the perverse, the ugly, and the transgressive, will be read through a phenomenological poetics which encompasses de Sade and Nietzsche, as well as through the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan. Tolstoy's pursuit of a 'revelationist' aesthetics will be examined against his own theorising in What is Art?, as well as through Benjamin's, Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's thoughts on the work of art in the context of European Modernism. This investigation into the phenomenological aesthetics of the authors should enable students to develop a critique of the concept of mimesis in literary 'Realism'.