Tolstoy’s Novels: Lived Experience in Text

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel focuses on a cluster of motives, emotions, and ideas from Tolstoy’s two major novels analyzing them in textual, intertextual, historical, and biographical perspectives. We will reconstruct the lived experience underlining some specific episodes as a category that can bring together the creative history of the text, historical environment, political ideology, and emotional, historical, and intertextual experiences. This type of analysis sheds new light on the inner workings of both Tolstoy’s masterpieces as they unfold in diverse contexts.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 19th Century

Chair

• David M.B.L. Herman, U of Virginia

Papers

• Going to War in 'War and Peace' - Andrei Zorin, U of Oxford (UK)

• Elusive Empirehood: Subtleties of the Portrayal of Pan-Slavism in 'Anna Karenina' - Mikhail Dolbilov, U of Maryland, College Park

• Tolstoyan Laughter: Wit and Humor in 'Anna Karenina' - Olga Y. Maiorova, U of Michigan

Discussant

• Anne L Lounsbery, New York U