The Great Russian Novel: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Anna Karenina/ The Brothers Karamazov

We will read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky's culminating masterpieces closely, with an eye to the artistic originality and philosophical intensity with which they imbue their complex fictional worlds and passionately reasoning characters. Turgenev and Chekhov condense force and depth in short stories that offer a welcome counterpoint to the novels. Secondary sources encourage students from different fields to try out a variety of epistemological approaches.