Course Syllabus

Russian/MEMS 391
Russian 551

Art, Culture, and Literature in Old Russia

Fall Term, 2016
Tuesday, Thursday 1.00 – 2.30

MLB B 134

 

This course provides an introduction to the culture of the Eastern Slavs from the ninth century until the seventeenth, and looks at the employment of elements of that culture in Russia from the nineteenth century until the present day.  It requires no special historical or linguistic knowledge and is intended to be of interest to anyone curious about medieval and early-modern culture.  While the primary emphasis will be on Old Russian literature, the course will also examine art, architecture, folklore, and other cultural forms.

            The course will help students to develop the analytical skills required for the examination of medieval and early-modern cultures (including basic tools of textual criticism and instrumentation to read symbolic languages very different from ours) and  to develop an understanding of cultural premises radically different from those on which post-Enlightenment Europe has relied.  The course will look at the East Slavs of Rus’ and Muscovy in comparison with the peoples around them and will also look at how post-Petrine Russia has turned again and again to “Old Russia” and, indeed, has, in some areas, shown remarkable continuity with that Old Russian past.

            Students will also develop skills in analytical writing, in treating both very specific, materials-based topics and broader, conceptual issues.

            Students taking this course at the graduate level (Russian 551) will meet with the instructor for one additional hour per week, time to be arranged, and will be expected to develop the appropriate language skills to work with assigned texts in the original.

Classes will consist primarily of informal lectures in which student participation is encouraged. Written assignments for the course are: three short papers (1,500 words each), and a final, longer paper (2,500-3,000 words).  The short papers are each worth 20% of the total grade, the final paper is worth 30%, while class participation is worth 10%.   

            Three books (supplemented by abundant materials posted to the C-Tools course site) have been ordered for the course and are required purchases:

Serge Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia's Epics Chronicle and Tales, rev. ed. (Meridian Books, 1992; ISBN: 0452010861).

Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, tr., The Domostroi (Cornell UP, 1995; ISBN: 0801496896).

Archpriest Avvakum: The Life written by Himself  tr. K Brostrom (Michigan Slavic Translations, 1977),             

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES:

 

 

SEPTEMBER

T    6 Introduction to class.  Key problems, issues in the study of “pre-modern” Russia.

Th  8 Exemplary Pieces -- Canvas (Discussion)

 

Kievan Rus’

 

T    13 Continued

Th 15 The Primary Chronicle (Zenkovsky)

 

T  20    The Primary Chronicle, cont.

Th 23  The Primary Chronicle, conc.

 

T    27 Ilarion, Sermon on Law and Grace (Zenkovsky, Canvas)

Th  29 Lives of Sts Boris and Gleb (Zenkovsky; Canvas)

OCTOBER

 

T    4    cont.

Th 6     conc.

First Paper Due

T    11  Byzantine influences in sacred art and architecture; Russkaya Pravda – Russian Law (Materials on Canvas)

 

Th  13  Ordinary” communications – the story of birch-bark writing (Canvas). Remnants of court poetry – the Bylina (Canvas)

STUDY BREAK

 

Th 20 No class.  Watch the films Andrei Rublev and Island.

 

T    25 Tarkovskii’s version of C14/15th Russia; Lungin’s version of modern monasticism (discussion)

Th  27  Byliny, concluded; films; Andrei Rublev and Russian Iconography (online materials; Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev); introduction to Slovo

 

NOVEMBER

 

T    1    The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, (Zenkovsky, Canvas).

The Tatar Yoke and the Rise of Muscovy

 

 

Th  3    Battle on the River Kalka; Orison of the Downfall of Russia; Tale of the Destruction of Ryazan’ by Baty;  Zadonshchina;  Life of Alexander Nevskii  (Zenkovsky)

 

T   8     The “Second South Slavonic Influence”.  Epifanii Premudrii, The Life of St Sergius of Radonezh, The Life of St Stepan of Perm’ (Zenkovsky, Canvas)

Second Paper Due

 

Th 10   conc.

 

T 15     “Tale of the White Cowl”; Afanasii Nikitin, Journey Across Three Seas (Zenkovsky)

 

 

Th 17   Ivan IV – Culture and Change (scholarly materials online); Ivan IV,  Correspondence with Ivan Kurbskii (texts and scholarly materials online).

 

Seventeenth-century Culture

 

T 22     Domostroi  -- life in Muscovy

 

THANKSGIVING BREAK

 

T 29     Emergent Secular Literature. Beyond the elite: Tale of Woe and Misfortune  (Zankovaksy, Canvas).  Tales of Possession (Zenkovsky, Canvas)

 

Old-Russian Culture and Modern Russia

 

DECEMBER

Th 1     The Schism (scholarly materials online)
Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself (Zenkovsky; scholarly materials online)

 

 

T    6  Folklore and paganism in modern Russia (materials online). Neo-Russian architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (materials online).  Hagiography and belles lettres in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (materials online)
Third Paper Due

Th 8   Ancient models for modern dissent (materials online)

 

T    13  Concluding Remarks

M 19 Final Paper Due

Michael Makin
3016 MLB
Tel. 647-2142
E-mail: mlmakin@umich.edu
Office Hours:
T 3-4; Th 9-10

Download Syllabus: 391-WT-2016-ORC Syll.docx