Fall 2007

RUS 391 • Modern Russian Poetery

Course Description

A look at Russian poetry since about 1950 (with possible excursions back to important predecessors). Major figures to be covered include the guitar-poets Vladimir Vysotsky, Bulat Okudzhava and Aleksandr Galich as well as other poets such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky and Iosif Brodsky. The course will have a workshop structure, centered on the exploration of individual areas of interest and be discussion-based. We will orient ourselves by reading about the main currents of Russia poetry after WWII and by sampling anthologies. The instructor will also provide an introduction to the structure of Russian classical verse, and the ways that modern verse has opened it up. Then we will highlight individual areas of interest. For example, we can consider things like the poetry of dissent, poetry coming out of the Gulag, Russian poetry of the absurd, or womens' voices in contemporary verse. Course work will include short written textual analyses and culminate in a research paper. A good reading knowledge of Russian is assumed, though in some cases English translations are available, either in print or on-line.

Texts

Reference works in this area include: A History of Russian Poetry (Evelyn Bristol), Post-War Russian Poetry, 20th century Russian Poetry (selected by Yevgeny Evtushenko), Contemporary Russian Poetry (a Bilingual Anthology) ed. Gerald Smith, Gerald Smith, Songs to Seven Strings, Suzanne Massie, The Living Mirror, Seven Young Poets from Leningrad. UT also owns the complete cassette collection Pesni russkikh bardov, with texts.

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