M 4-6:30, CL1221
Helena Goscilo, Office hours: W 3:30-4:30, H 4-6
This course investigates (1) "classic" theories of the novel—chiefly those of Mikhail Bakhtin, Gyorgy Lukács, and, secondarily, those of José Ortega y Gasset, Marthe Robert, Alain Robbe-Grillet, etc., and (2) seven "mainstream"/malestream nineteenth-century Russian examples of the genre in light of those theories. Topics structuring the course include the traditional comparison of the epic with the novel; novelistic discourse and psychological paradigms; history and the novel; the conventions and functions of the Bildungsroman; novelistic chronotopes (e.g., the idyll); narrative voice, and so forth. "The family" serves as the overarching framework for our discussions, since it materializes history in domesticated form, provides a meta-view of novelistic development [Harold Bloom's contestable "anxiety of influence"], and prefigures more than a half-century of Soviet cultural rhetoric.
All primary readings are in Russian; most secondary readings (including Bakhtin, for the sake of convenience) are in English. Although the course emphasizes issues of genre, it allots due attention to the cultural and historical context that both incubated and responded to the Russian works of fiction we shall be reading. The twofold goal of the course is to acquire (a) a sound understanding of the novel as a genre and (b) a thorough familiarity with historically important instances of, and debates around, the century's dominant fictional form.
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (U of Texas P, 1981) [DI]
______. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (U of Minnesota P, 1984/1985) (PoDP]
Michael McKeon, ed. Theory of the Novel (Johns Hopkins UP, 2000)[ToN]
Various xeroxed articles and items on reserve at Hillman Library [R]
Aleksandr Pushkin, Kapitanskaia dochka (1836)
Mikhail Lermontov, Geroi nashego vremeni (1840)
Ivan Goncharov, Obyknovennaia istoriia (1846)
Sergei Aksakov, Semeinaia khronika (1856)
Ivan Turgenev, Ottsy i deti (1862)
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gospoda Golovlevy (1872-76)
Fedor Dostoevskii, Besy (1877)
The assigned novels by Goncharov, Aksakov, and Saltykov-Shedrin, various volumes, and xeroxes of articles are on reserve at Hillman Library (referenced as R on the syllabus). I have not ordered any Russian materials, on the assumption that most of you own the texts by Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. If not, please order them, as well as the lesser known works, through Russian House, tel: (212) 685-1010; fax: (212) 685-1046.
Completion of assigned readings for the day specified;
regular participation in class discussions;
two class presentations (15 mins. each);
two critiques of fellow grads' presentations (5-10 mins. each);
a one-page paper on a given topic for each class meeting;
either two 7-page papers OR one 15-page paper on a topic/topics to be determined in consultation with me.
In assembling the syllabus I kept in mind that several of you will be taking MA or PhD exams in late September—hence the assignment for the first meeting, which consists of three significant statements about the novel vis-à-vis the epic. My hope is that by the time you start writing your exams you'll be well acquainted with Bakhtin's notions of the novel and we shall have read and discussed at least two examples of the genre.
Definitions of the novel; approaches to the genre (NB: French and Russian "roman," Italian "romanzo," German "Roman"/romance; English "novel," Spanish "novela"/novelty)
Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel" (1941) (DI: 3-40)
Lukács, from The Theory of the Novel (ToN: 185-218)
Ortega y Gasset, from Meditations on Quixote (ToN: 271-93)
Continuity vs. rupture; wholeness vs. fragmentation; centripetal vs. centrifugal forces
Multiple points of intersection, yet different emphases: Lukács' "paradise lost" of epic; Bakhtin's "life discovery" of novel; Ortega y Gasset's poetry of epic narration vs. prosaics of novelistic description
Bakhtin, "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse" (1940)(DI: 41-83): represented vs. representing; dialogical contact; character zone; polyglossia; parody & travesty (Laughter); intentional hybrid
Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel" (1937-38) (DI: 84-258): chronotope and proto-novelistic genres
Michel Aucouturier, "The Theory of the Novel in Russia in the 1930s: Lukács and Bakhtin," The Russian Novel from Pushkin to Pasternak, ed. John Garrard: 227-40 (xerox: R)
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
Pushkin, Kapitanskaia dochka (1836)
Family chronicle, epic, historical novel (Walter Scott)
Lukács, from The Historical Novel (ToN: 219-64)
Moretti, from The Way of the World: the "Bildungsroman" in European Culture (ToN: 554-65)
The dream and issues of filiation, succession, legitimacy, Pretenders; reading body signs
Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams; Family Romances (ToN: 149-59)
Robert, from Origins of the Novel (ToN: 160-78)
Caryl Emerson, "Grinev's Dream: The Captain's Daughter and a Father's Blessing," Slavic Review (Spring 1981): 60-76 (R)
Omissions and inclusions; conclusion
Aksakov, Semeinaia khronika (1956) (R)
Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel" [again] (DI: 224-36; 243-58)
The idyll & Natural(ized) Man; links with epic; origins and definitive points of reference; folkloric cycle
Aksakov, conc.
Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel" (1934-35) (DI: 259-422)
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
Goncharov, Obyknovennaia istoriia (1846) (R)
Moretti, from The Way of the World: the "Bildungsroman..." (ToN: 554-65) [again]
Dialogue between country and city; idyll and "progress"; Romanticism and Rationalism/Utilitarianism; discursive and "empirical" selves [review Bakhtin,"From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse" (41-80)]
The problematics of a destabilizing conclusion & the roman à thèse
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
If necessary, a catch-up session; if not, Nikolai Leskov, "Ocharovannyi strannik" and Benjamin, "The Storyteller" (ToN: 77-93)
Class and craft, and their primacy in "forging" narrative; plotting wisdom
1st 7-page paper due
Lermontov, Geroi nashego vremeni (1840)
Lewis Bagby, "Narrative Double-Voicing in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time," SEEJ 22, 3 (1978): 265-86 (xerox: R)
Cyclization; the open end; the metaphysical/existential dimension; most radical of ruptures; surrogates in endless process of substitution/slippage/mobility; perspectivism [Nietzsche] and sequencing; centripetal (fortress, spa, aul) vs. centrifugal space (ravines, rivers, mountains); mirroring techniques
Turgenev, Ottsy i deti (1862)
"Men of the 40s vs. men of the 60s"; Belinskii's "obraz" vs. Pisarev's "boots"; art vs. science; aesthetics vs. utility: genre and the meta-dimension in Turgenev (stories and tales vs. novels); dialogue with Goncharov
Bakhtin, DI: 315-20; PoDP: 285-86
Elizabeth C. Allen, Beyond Realism (Stanford UP, 1992): 136-75
Jane Costlow, World within Worlds: the Novels of Ivan Turgenev (Princeton UP, 1990)
David A. Lowe, Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (Ardis, 1983), esp. 114-40
The problematic conclusion revisited
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
Bakhtin, PoDP 5-180
Dostoevskii, Besy (1877)–Parts I & II
Subjectivity & identity formation; pivotal role of the idea
Rorty, "Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals" (ToN: 537-53)
Narrative voice as destructive creation or creative destruction(meta-level)
Intertexts (e.g., Smutnoe vremia, Lermontov's Geroi nashego vremeni); myth and folklore; structure and spatialization; dialogue with Turgenev
V. Ivanov, "Osnovnoi mir v romane Besy," "Besy": Antologiia russkoi kritiki: 508-513 (R)
Dostoevskii, Besy–Part III
Michael Holquist, "The Biography of Legend: The Possessed," Michael Holquist, Dostoevsky & the Novel (Northwestern UP, 1977): 124-47 (R)
Leonid Grossman, "Stilistika Stavrogina," "Besy": Antologiia russkoi kritiki: 606-614(R)
A. Bem, "Evoliutsiia obraza Stavrogina" "Besy": Antologiia russkoi kritiki: 638-62 (R)
Conclusion—significance of novelistic closure; how to read endings (cf. Frank Kermode); how to reread them; the consequences of rereading (Matei Calinescu)
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
Bakhtin, PoDP: 181-302
Caryl Emerson, "The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin," Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges, eds. G. S. Morson & C. Emerson (Northwestern UP, 1989): 149-70 (R)
Polyphony, dialogism, other(s) and consciousness: Russian novelists' relationship to these categories
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
2nd 7-page paper due
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gospoda Golovlevy (1872-76) (R)
Naturalism, physiology, materialism (and the "scientific mode") vs. fantasy and dreamworld ("the poetic mode"/"romanticism"?)
Status of discourse; paradoxes of repetition
Successive generations as degeneration; chronotope of extinction
2 class presentations; 2 critiques
15-page paper due
McKeon, "The New Novel, the Postmodern Novel" (ToN: 803-808)
Robbe-Grillet, from For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction (ToN: 809-29)
Hutcheon, "Historiographic Metafiction" (ToN: 830-50)
Preview of the 20th-century novel: Andrei Belyi's Peterburg (wr. 1912; pd. 1916 [Sirin ed.])
General discussion and summary