OSHER 214 - Tolstoy: Life, Philosophy, and Anna Karenina

This class will start with a brief examination of Tolstoy's long life (1828-1910) and his multi-varied, ever fluctuating philosophical stances. Then, we will examine and explicate (if possible) the various meanings contained in his novel Anna Karenina. We will examine narrative forms and this narrator in particular, and then we will investigate how Tolstoy illustrates the meaning of family, love, vengeance, and suicide in the context of Russian culture of the 1870s.