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The students have acquired a thorough knowledge of Aleksandr Puškin’s central works; they are proficient in major analytical approaches and methods of interpretation of literary texts.

No other poet influenced Russian literature in general and Russian poetry in particular like Aleksandr Puškin (1799-1837), the Russian national poet, a national icon. Working in different well established genres (poetry, prose, drama) and developing entirely new genres (such as his masterpiece, the novel in verse ‘Evgenii Onegin’ with it’s ‘Onegin stanza’), one of Puškin's main contribution was the development of a new and modern (literary) language. For generations of Russian poets (and, remarkably enough, non-Russian poets as well), his poems, novels, short stories, etc. served as points of reference, as intertexts of immeasurable importance.

The course pursues a twofold aim. The first is to acquaint ourselves with a broad range of canonical texts (belonging to different genres and periods of his work), texts indispensable for the understanding of Russian literature both of Puškin’s own period and that of later times, of Russia’s literary and intellectual history in general. The second aim is deepen and extend the knowledge of analytical approaches to literature, of different methods of interpretation.

We will look at Puškin’s poetry (hereby focusing on texts about the status of the poet in Russian society, his functions and fate), at prose (particularly the povesti, stories or tales), drama, and, naturally, those texts overstepping genre boundaries such as the (long or epic) poems and the novel in verse ‘Evgenii Onegin’. Furthermore, we will examine musical and film adaptations of his works.

 In order to analyze this wide scope of very different texts, we will employ a range of methodical approaches, beginning with those developed by the Formal and Structural schools up to more recent  theories (e.g. Cultural and Postcolonial Studies).

Term paper

Bethea, David M. (Ed.):  The Pushkin Handbook. Madison, Wisc., 2005

Burdorf, Dieter: Einführung in die Gedichtanalyse. Stuttgart, 2015

Fludernik, Monika: Erzähltheorie. Eine Einführung. Darmstadt, 2013

Kahn, Andrew (Ed. ): The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin. Cambridge, 2006

Pfister, Manfred: Das Drama. Theorie und Analyse. München, 2001

Due to substantial differences in the allocation of ECTS-Credits in various curricula (teacher training programs/specialized degree programs), the requirements for this course vary. Information will be provided by the instructor at the beginning of the course.