Fathers and Sons: an Encyclopedia of Generational Conflict in 19thC Russia

Catalog description

This course offers a close reading of one of the most exquisitely narrated novels of the Russian realist canon, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Written in the early 1860s, the novel is set in an era of transition when progressive, enlightened liberalism of the Russian landed gentry clashed with the new revolutionary ideas espoused by young radicals. A simple tale of a generational conflict becomes a mirror in which the key social and political questions of the time are reflected and enlarged. The purpose of the course is to expand students' knowledge of political and cultural history of the 19th century Russia through a close reading of the novel aided by an array of historical and literary sources, such a memoirs, literary fragments and journalism of the era.