This course surveys Russian literature from the Romantic period to the age of High Realism, examining the careers of some of Russia’s greatest authors and looking in detail at some of the world’s most famous works of literature, from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin to Dostoevskii’s Crime and Punishment. Individual works of literature will be studied in detail, with various possible interpretations proposed and interrogated, but they will also be placed in the context of the political, intellectual, and social history of the period, and of their authors’ lives and literary careers.