RJv100 The Russian Novel

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2016
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 3 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
prof. PhDr. Ivo Pospíšil, DrSc. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Ivo Pospíšil, DrSc.
Department of Slavonic Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: doc. PhDr. Jiří Gazda, CSc.
Supplier department: Department of Slavonic Studies – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
each even Tuesday 15:50–17:25 B2.43
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 30 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/30, only registered: 0/30, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/30
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The aim of the course is to explicate the problems of the development and the theory of the Russian novel as an output of both the autochthonous and allochthonous roots which reached its peak in the 19th century Golden Age of Russian literature of the realist epoch. The course covers the interpretation of the poetic sources of the Russian novel in the old Russian literature, the imitative phase of the genre in the 18th century and of the canon of the Russian novel in its Golden Age as well as the original works of prominent Russian novelist of the 18th-21st centuries including the terminology and methodology of the theory of the novel in general.
Syllabus
  • Rise, genesis and theory of the novel. The two contradictory conceptions of the rise of the novel in general. The novel continuity and discontinuity. The beginnings of the theory of the novel in Neoclassicism. The outline of the evolution of the novel in Euro-American cultural sphere. The 20th-century theory of the novel. The Central European position.
  • The rise of the Russian novel and its various conceptions of its rise and evolution. Foreign and autochthonous roots of the Russian novel. The specific features of the Russian novel as a demonstration of the pre-post effect in Russian literature. Autochthonous sources of the Russian novel in the Middle Ages: byliny, epic poetry, tales of campaigns, chronicles, hagiographies, and travelogues.
  • Nodal points in the development of the Russian novel: Avvakum’s Autobiography, Karamzin’ Letters of a Russian Traveller. Russian imitations of the European novel in the 18th century: Fyodor and Nicholas Emin, Chulkov, Narezhnyi. The development o the Russian medium and minor prose in the 18th and in the firtst half of he 19th century.
  • The Verse and the Novel: the form of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin
  • Transformation of the confessional, picaresque, and historical novel
  • Various models of the formation of the Russian novel: Pushkin – Lermontov – Gogol – Turgenev – Goncharov – Leo Tolstoy - Dostoevsky
  • The synthetizing role of Natural School
  • The three types of the Russian novel of the Golden Age: Leo Tolstoy –Fyodor Dostoevsky – Nicolai Leskov
  • Analysis of the most significant works of the Russian 19th-century novelists: Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The novel written by revolutionary democrats and narodniks
  • Did the naturalistic novel exist in Russia?
  • Evolution and disintegration of the Russian novel in the second half of the 19th century: Anton Chekhov
  • Russian modernist novel: Merezhkovsky, Bely, Artsybashev, Bryusov
  • The movement of the novel as a genre in the Russian prose of the 1920s and the 1930s: return of action, experiment with the plot, monumentalization and historicity of the 1930s
  • The type of the Russian novel in the 20th century: Gorky – Zamyatin - Bunin - Sholokhov – Bulgakov – Platonov – Pasternak
  • Development of the Russian novel in the second half of the 20th century: Russian novel in the U.S.S.R. and emigration, revitalization of confessional novel, escape to the tradition („village prose“) and to the past (historiosophic novel)
  • „The retutned novel“ of the period of glasnost, perestroika and catastroika
  • The Russian novel and postmodernism
  • Tradition and Experiment in the Russian novel in comparative aspect
  • Several types of the Russian novel of today
Literature
    recommended literature
  • Gifford, H.: The Novel in Russia: from Pushkin to Pasternak. London 1964.
  • Boyd, A.: Aspects of Russian Novel. Chatto and Windus, London 1972.
  • Folklore Genres. Edited by Dan Ben-Amos. Austin 1976.
  • From Pushkin to Palisandriia. Essays on the Russian Novel in Honour of Richard Freeborn. Ed. By Arnold MacMillin. Basingstoke, Macmillan 1990.
  • Griffith, F.: Epic and the Russian Novel: from Gogol to Pasternak. Academic Studies Press, Boston 2011.
  • Brown, W.: A History of Eighteenth-Century Russian Literature. Ann Arbor 1980.
  • Lathrop, H. B.: The Art of the Novelist. London 1921.
  • Simpson, M.: The Russian Gothic Novel and Its British Antecedents. Columbus 1986.
  • Freeborn, R.: The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in the Russian Novel from Eugene Onegin to War and Peace. Cambridge University Press 1973.
  • The twentieth-century Russian novelan introduction. Edited by David C. Gillespie. Washington, D.C.: Berg, 1996, vii, 179 p. ISBN 1859730833. info
  • FORSTER, E. M. Aspects of the novel. Edited by Oliver Stallybrass. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, 204 p. ISBN 0-14-018398-1. info
  • BAYLEY, John. Tolstoy and the novel. New York: The Viking Press, 1967. info
  • LUBBOCK, Percy. The craft of fiction. London: Jonathan Cape, 1965, x, 277. info
  • MUIR, Edwin. The structure of the novel. London: Hogarth Press, 1946, 151 p. : 1. info
Teaching methods
Lectures.
Assessment methods
Colloquium (written test).
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
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