LIT 209 — Dostoevsky's The Idiot
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Anne Hruska
Date(s): Jan 7—Mar 18
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Thursdays
Class Meeting Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Please Note: No class on January 14
Tuition: $585
Refund Deadline: Jan 9
Unit(s): 2
Status: Registration opens Nov 30, 8:30 am (PT)
The Idiot is Fyodor Dostoevsky's most mystical novel—a beautiful, funny, heart-wrenching exploration of the human condition and the potential for salvation or destruction. It's also a striking example of the author's artistic philosophy, which he described as a "special view of reality," one in which "what the majority calls almost fantastic and exceptional sometimes constitutes the very essence of the real." He argued that its heightened emotion and dramatic situations do not make the novel unrealistic, as some critics maintained. Instead, it offers a higher form of realism, a more intense version of the truth. This “fantastic realism” carries us from one passionate scene to the next—violence and exploitation, melodramatic temper tantrums, moments of transcendent love. In this course, we'll examine The Idiot from a number of angles, concentrating in particular on the revolutionary politics of 1860s Russia and on the novel's central religious and philosophical dilemma: whether true goodness can survive in a world driven by money and social ambition.
This course offers the opportunity to read The Idiot in depth, and students are encouraged to allow ample time for reading and reflection.
ANNE HRUSKA
Senior English Instructor, Stanford Online High School
Anne Hruska taught in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities program and has also taught at UC Berkeley, the University of Missouri, and the Pedagogical Institute in Saratov, Russia. She received a PhD in Russian literature from UC Berkeley. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear (trans), Larissa Volokhonsky (trans), The Idiot (ISBN 978-0375702242)