Explore the greatest masterworks in Russian literature. Each quarter we will focus on a different book.
The most celebrated Russian writer of the 19th and early 20th century was not Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, but Ivan Turgenev – polyglot, world-class chess master, and the man who did more than anyone to open up Russia to the West. Admired by Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Ernest Hemingway, but despised by Tolstoy and mocked by Dostoevsky in The Devils, Turgenev was both adored and envied in his lifetime. Together, we will discover Turgenev’s stunning sensitivity to nature; to injustice; to people from all walks of life; and to the subtlest emotions underlying everyday life – including his eternally relevant novel of generational gap and conflict, Fathers and Children.
This is a Hyflex class, meaning that each class meeting you may choose to attend either in person or online via Zoom. The Zoom Meeting ID and link will be included in your registration confirmation email.
Required Texts:
- Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Children. New York Review of Books, 2022. ISBN: 9781681376356.
- Turgenev, Ivan. First Love and Other Stories. OUP Oxford, 2008. ISBN: 9780199540402.
- Turgenev, Ivan. Sketches from a Hunter’s Album: The Complete Edition. Penguin Publishing Group, 1990. ISBN: 9780140445220.
No class held 4/15.