SEER OF THE FLESH: TOLSTOY'S ART AND THOUGHT FALL 2018

SEER OF THE FLESH: TOLSTOY'S ART AND THOUGHT
RUSSIAN 36
FALL 2018
No prerequisites.
Kopper @ 2

From childhood to the end of his life, Tolstoy struggled to overcome his fear of death. As he himself put the problem, 'Is there any meaning in my life which the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?' In his quest for bulwarks against that fear, he studied the great philosophers and he examined closely the value system of the peasants. He found temporary relief in war and in marriage, but the definitive solution always eluded him. The evolution of this theme, and the formal devices by which Tolstoy expressed it in his prose, will be traced in the autobiographical cycle, the Caucasian stories and the Sevastopol tales. Those works will serve as a context in which to scrutinize the major novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. This course will conclude with a brief examination of the prose which Tolstoy produced after his conversion.