During this semester we discussed a lot of texts and social contexts that they were written in or issues they were dedicated to. Your task is to choose a text (or several texts) that try to deal with an event or a process from Russian history. How does this or that author approach the chosen subject? What tools does he/she use to tell the story? For example, you can talk about the Russian Revolution and the Civil War using Babel’s texts as one of the possible ways to describe this event. How do we see the Revolution in the Red Cavalry? What are the aesthetic choices Babel makes to speak about this significant event? What is he focusing on?
Title should be created. Citation style -chicago
Required sources
: 1. The Stories of the Private Lives:
Alexander Pushkin – From The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin: “The Station Master”, (recommended: “Lady Peasant”)
2. The Little Man in His Extreme Form:
Nikolai Gogol “The Overcoat” (Recommended: “The Nose”, “The Notes of the Madman”)
3. The Nature of Observation:
Ivan Turgenev – From A Sportsman’s Sketches (“Khor and Kalinych”, “Raspberry Water”, “The Singers”)
4. The Voice of the Other: A Story within a Story
Nikolai Leskov “The Toupee Artist”
5. War and Truth
Leo Tolstoy – Sevastopol Sketches
6. The Nature of the Good Deed
Leo Tolsoy “The Landowner’s Morning”
7. Dreams and Truth
Fyodor Dostoevsky “Dream of a Ridiculous Man”
8. Madness and Art
Vsevolod Garshin “A Red Flower”, “Four Days”
9. Brutal Honesty or Exaggeration?
Anton Chekhov “In the Ravine”
10. History and the Eternal
Anton Chekhov “The Student”
11. History, Violence and Beauty
Isaac Babel – From The Red Cavalry (“Crossing the River Zbrucz”, “My First Goose”, “The Life of Matvei Pavlichenko”)
12. The Myth and the Reality:
Evgeny Zamyatin “The Cave”, “The Dragon”
13. The Wind of the Revolution:
Boris Pilnyak – “The Human Wind”, “The Untitled Story”
14. Speech and Writing
Mikhail Zoshenko “The Victim of the Revolution”, “The Lady Aristocrat”, “The Bathhouse”
What are the aesthetic choices Babel makes to speak about this significant event? What is he focusing on?
