LFU:online

Students are able to describe and explain family topics and problems that appear in Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian literature. They are familiar with the historical and social context of the analysed texts.

Family structures and family affairs reveal the character of a given society, they also reveal the specific feature of a national literature and its historical context. On the basic of a selected subject, the family, similarities and differences between two Slavic literatures – Russian and Bosnian/Croation/Serbian – are displayed.

In Russia the familiy becomes disreputable with the revolution of 1917. Literatury texts show the same development and effect: from literature we learn about the socialist collective society. Familiy affairs are no more of any interest. Works written in the 19th century, however, cleary depict bourgois family affairs, with all their liberties and restrictions. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is one of the best examples. If and how family structures are again to be found in Russian literature in the course of the late 20th century remains to be discussed and analysed. 

Quite different is the situation on the Balkans. The family has been a powerful social institution since centuries and has not lost its influence in socialist times. Many family stories can be found in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian literature in the 20th century. However, WWII and the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s put the family under pressure, in literature as well as in reality.

In the course we will will focus on these differences and similarities. Jewish family stories play a major role in both literatures, they seem to undermine concepts of national literatures and resist political changes.

Short introductory lectures by the lecturer/professor, independent reading by the students, discussion, presentations.

oral presentation, written essay at the end of the term

Geiger, Homer Kent: The family in Soviet Russia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1968.

Hirsch, Marianne: Family frames. Photography, narrative and postmemory. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1997.

Kaser, Karl: Familie und Verwandtschaft auf dem Balkan. Analyse einer untergehenden Kultur. Wien: Böhlau Verlag 1995.

Mandeleker, Amy: Framing Anna Karenina. Tolstoy, the Woman Question and the Victorian Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University 1993.

Matz, Wolfgang: Die Kunst des Ehebruchs. Emma, Anna, Effi und ihre Männer. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2014.

Ransel, David L.: The family in imperial Russia. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1978.

Positive assessment in the proseminar in literary studies (= PM 11a in the BA Curriculum of 2015)

Creditable also for WM 13 (Selected topics of Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian Literature), but not creditable for both courses.