The Bildungsroman in Russia & The West

(4 Credits)

The course explores the generic field of the Bildungsroman as it organizes a number of representative narratives in nineteenth-century Russia and Western Europe in light of modernity?s paradoxical injunctions towards rigorous socialization on the one hand and subjective volatilization on the other. The course foregrounds difficulties and rewards of the Bildungsroman within the specifically Russian literary tradition and social context. Readings from Goethe, Balzac, Constant, Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Flaubert, Lermontov, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.