109-124 Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

European studies students wishing to enrol in this subject would normally have completed first year European studies, see Prerequisites.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This 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'.

Assessment

Written work totalling 4000 words comprising a 1500 word class paper and a 2500 word essay.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.

• F M Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Penguin.
• M De Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings. Arrow Books, 1990.
• F Nietzsche, Human All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. M Faber with S Lehmann (trans) University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
• L Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Penguin.
• L Tolstoy, What is Art?. Penguin.