Russian Versification: Poetry as System

The study of verse is foundational to literary theory and poetics. The practical goal of the course is to acquaint the students with specific features of Russian prosody and verse in its historical development and to survey such basic concepts as meter and rhythm, iamb and trochee, ternary meters and dolniks, accentual verse and free verse, rhyme and stanza in order to grasp their difference within Russian poetry from what we encounter in ancient Greek and Latin, as well as modern European literatures. The material of the course helps better understand the different stages in the history of Russian literature. We also address various approaches to poetry translation and the use of oriental verse forms (Persian, Japanese etc.) in Russian modern and modernist literature. Taught in English, readings in Russian. Prerequisite: Two years of Russian.