RUSS 273 - Focus on Literature

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Individually designed for Russian majors and other students with some knowledge of Russian. Students in this course attend the same lectures and discussions as those in RUSS 173, but are required to do part of the work in Russian.

Topic for 2013/14b: Nabokov Before “Lolita”: The Making of a Genius in the Era of Jazz and Surrealism. This course considers the novels and novellas of Vladimir Nabokov written during the 1920s and 1930s in a broad cultural context of the period. Nabokov became an international celebrity with the publication of Lolita (1955). The scandal and sensationalism aside, the book earned him the reputation as one of the most accomplished stylists in the English language. But in the decades before producing Lolita, Nabokov had had a brilliant literary career as a Russian émigré writer in Europe. This course approaches Nabokov’s pre-Lolita works through a comparison with the writings of Franz Kafka, Evelyn Waugh, Nathaniel West, and the art of Surrealism. The goal of the course is to explore the cultural atmosphere that helped shape Nabokov as we know him. Mr. Firtich.

Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.

All readings and discussion in English.