Pain in Polish and Russian Twentieth-Century Literature

Does pain and reflection on pain teach us something about ourselves, the world, our relation to it? This seminar approaches the question by examining the meaning of pain in Russian/Polish literature/literary theory of the 20th century. Our concern is with pain's resistance to language and representation. The works analyzed offer a variety of responses to problem of pain as it appears in theology, experimental medicine, discussions of materialism, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and above all, the giants of Russian literature, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, in whom these debates are dramatized; they also form the ground on which Russian and Polish literature meet. Enrollment limited to 20 juniors and seniors.