The Tolstoy Event: War and Peace

A close reading of Tolstoy's major novel, with a focus on its interweaving of fictional and historical narrative and metahistorical discourse. Attention to issues of genre (e.g. the tension between "epic and novel"), literary tradition, the poetics of time and space, as well as his iconoclastic ideas about narrative, art, religion, and society. Tolstoy's formal innovation will be considered in a broader historical and cultural context. Selected readings in Bakhtin, Lukacs, Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, Hayden White and others. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.