Literature essay is your final essay, a major research project. It should be 7 pages long (more is OK, less is not enough).
The final essay is due by Sunday, April 21st, 11.59pm. Please email me your essays at professor.*******************.
Please don’t post your final essays on this forum. Here you can post questions that you’d like to ask in regard to this essay. You can also ask your questions by email.
Please refer to the syllabus for general requirements and post additional questions here.
You can find the links to the works of Russian classical literature at the end of External Links section on Blackboard.
Please don’t delay initiating this work and start thinking early how you will be structuring your essay. I also request that you use at least a few good, reliable scholarly sources (articles, book chapters and monographs going beyond our class readings) to frame your own analysis.
While working on this project, you should concentrate on how Russian / Soviet life is portrayed through the prism of the writer’s perception. What specific features of the Russian life of the period are you able to notice? What kind of issues seem to be important to the author? What literary means does the author use, what can be said about the style and the place this work occupies in the literary process? Please be historically sensitive, look at the dates and think of what was going on in Russia at the moment of writing.
I’d ike for everyone to read at least three novels or a substantial selection of short stories or poetry. You can concentrate on one genre or author; as an alternative, you can look at how Russian life was presented in different genres at different times by different authors throughout the history of Russian literature. I want you to look at the representations of Russian life and the ways writers seek to represent it for the purposes of their art.You need to understand and convey in your writing why exactly the author was interested in working with a particular topic in a particular way at this particular period of time.
You need to clearly understand the historical context of each work of literature, meaning when it was written and what was going on in Russia at that time as well as what historical period is presented in the book and what was going on in the country back then. Please always refer to particular periods; don’t assume “Soviet period” was always the same: 1930s were very different from, say, 1970s.
Please write down your observations of power and authority, gender roles, family and work relations, and class issues as well as emotions, humor and bitterness. What does literature tell us about how people used to live in Russia? How is Russian literature different from other national literary traditions that you are familiar with?
Please refer to the Essay section on the syllabus for more questions and instructions.
Please read and analyze at least 5 pieces of prose (short stories, novels or novellas) or a comprehensive selection of poetry.
PROSE
Literature Essay Links
Alexander Pushkin. The Daughter of the Commandant.
http://www.online-literature.com/alexander-pushkin/daughter-of-the-commandant/
Alexander Pushkin. The Queen of Spades.
http://www.online-literature.com/alexander-pushkin/2800/
Alexander Pushkin. The Shot.
http://www.online-literature.com/alexander-pushkin/2801/
Nikolai Gogol. The Overcoat.
http://www.online-literature.com/gogol/1651/
Nikolai Gogol. St. John’s Eve.
http://www.online-literature.com/gogol/1652/
Nikolai Gogol. The Mysterious Portrait.
http://www.online-literature.com/gogol/mysterious-portrait/
Nikolai Gogol. Taras Bulba.
http://www.online-literature.com/gogol/taras-bulba/
Ivan Turgenev. First Love.
http://www.online-literature.com/turgenev/first-love/
Ivan Turgenev. Mumu.
http://www.online-literature.com/turgenev/1972/
Leo Tolstoy. The Kreutzer Sonata.
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/kreutzer-sonata/
Leo Tolstoy. A Prisoner in the Caucasus.
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2888/
Leo Tolstoy. After the Dance.
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2728/
Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych.
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/death-of-ivan-ilych/
Fyodor Dostoevsky. A Gentle Spirit.
http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/gentle-spirit/
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Poor Folk.
http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/poor_folk/
Anton Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard.
http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/cherry-orchard/
Maxim Gorky. The Birth of a Man.
http://www.online-literature.com/maxim-gorky/2802/
==
A good selection of Russian and Soviet books:
http://www.arvindguptatoys. com/
Go to Books – English and then scroll down to English Translation of Russian Classics, Russian Children’s Books and Soviet Children’s Books.
For Soviet period see:
Mikhail Bulgakov. The Heart of a Dog.
Mikhail Bulgakov. Diaboliad.
+ SOVIET LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN:
Arkady Gaidar. Chuck and Geck.
Arkady Gaidar. Timur and His Squad.
Nikolai Nosov. Schoolboys.
Nikolai Nosov. Kolya Sinitsin’s Diary.
Nikolai Nosov. Jolly Family.
Valentin Kaverin. Two Captains.
==
POETRY
Alexander Pushkin
https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandtranslations/aleksander-pushkin
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/Pushkinhome.php
Vladimir Mayakovsky
https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandtranslations/vladimir-mayakovsky
Anna Akhmatova
https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandtranslations/anna-akhmatova
https://www.poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/Russian/Akhmatova.php
Marina Tsvetaeva
https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandtranslations/tsvetaeva
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/Tsvetaeva.php
Boris Pasternak
https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandtranslations/boris-pasternak
https://www.poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/Russian/Pasternak.php
Osip Mandelshtam
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/Mandelstam.php
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/MoreMandelstam.php
Final announcement from professor
Your 7-page research essays are due this coming Sunday, April 21st before 11.59pm. Please note that you should submit your essay to me by email at professor.*******************; please don’t post it on Discussion Board’s Essay forum. Please email me your essay as a single Word document, including your paper and your bibliography. No file formats other than Word will be accepted. Please name the file using the following pattern: “First Name Last Name Research Essay.”
Now I’d like to post here a few questions related to common mistakes in preparing and writing a research essay for this course. Hope they will be helpful as a checklist.
– Does your essay focus on a particular Russian art genre, such as photography, film or literature?
– Is it based on the materials provided under External Links on BB for your particular essay (Russian Photography, Film or Literature link sets)?
– Is your essay based on your own research, including your own analysis of your primary sources, such as viewing the provided photographs, watching dramatic films and actually reading the novels, short stories or poems provided?
– Have you viewed a significant number of photo albums provided, watched 5 full-length movies (or an equivalent in length selection of shorts) or read 5 novels (or an equivalent in length selection of short stories or volumes of poems)?
– Does your essay consist of 7 pages of text written by you, with occasional quotations from your academic sources?
– Did you use at least a few reliable scholarly sources (books or articles from the established academic journals listed in academic databases, such as JSTOR, Project Muse, etc.)? The relevant disciplines in the context of this project are Russian History and Art, Film or Literary Studies, depending on your chosen genre. You do need these in order to frame your research and put it into the context of the ongoing conversation about your chosen genre and particular Russian artists working in this genre.
– Did you properly cite your sources, surrounding all quotations by quotation marks followed by the name of the author, the year of publication and a particular page of the cited source in parentheses? Did you then include the full title of the source (following the American Anthropological Association/Chicago style of citation) into your bibliography (which should be attached after your 7-page paper)?
– Is your paper 7 pages long (not including the title page and the bibliography)?
And there is one more important thing that I’ll keep reminding you of. Please stay away from cheating and plagiarism, including the use of AI/GPT. The consequences are harsh, so please don’t consider this option. Before submitting your paper, please check if any of the passages you cite could be considered cheating or plagiarism, if all quotations have been separated from your own text by quotation marks, and if proper credit has been given to all of the authors whom you cite.
Please email me if you’ll have any last minute questions about the research essay assignment. I look forward to receiving your essays before the deadline and to reading them all. Hope you learned a lot about Russian art and history by conducting this research.
Good luck!
