Taboo, Truth, and the Self
This unit will involve the study of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (translated by Constance Garnett) (Oct. 13) and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Nov. 10). Focuses will include the life of Dostoevsky, the influences of the English Victorian writers, leading to Hardy’s own pre-modern Victorian panache. We will look at the similar exploration by each author of the meaning of truth—who defines it? Who defies it? What is the significance of discovering individual truth in relation to societal expectations? Other common themes revolve around the concepts of alienation and disappointment. In the work for Crime and Punishment, critical essays will be passed around for discussion—not just to deepen the understanding of the novel, but to give a new view of critical thinking and introduce the notion of criticism as a stream of thought to which all readers add. Readings on the book may include Phillip Rahv’s “Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment” (Partisan Review, XXVII [1960], 393-425), Louise Dauner’s “Raskolnikov in Search of a Soul” (Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. IV, No. 3 [Autumn 1958] 199-210), and George Gibian’s “Traditional Symbolism in Crime and Punishment” (PMLA, Vol. LXX, No. 5 [December 1955] 970-96), among others. These readings are intended to aid in your plans for an in-class AP-style essay on the book and a potential typed essay on the shared elements (themes, tropes, arcs, etc.) of Crime and Punishment and Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Click here to read the various works of literary criticism, as well as Dostoevsky's diary and letters regarding Crime and Punishment.
Click here to read about Tess of the D'Urbervilles and for extra handouts.
Outside Reading for Unit 2 (please select from this list only):
Vanity Fair (1847), by William Makepeace Thackeray [650 pp.]
Hard Times (1854), Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860), by Charles Dickens [290, 390, 485 pp.]
Anna Karenina (1847), by Leo Tolstoy (Trans. by Garnett or Volokhonsky or ??Ask??) [825 pp.]
Washington Square (1880), What Maisie Saw (1897), or Wings of the Dove (1902), by Henry James [240, 350, 550 pp.]
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), by Oscar Wilde [270 pp.]
Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and/or The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), by Oscar Wilde [65 pp./each]
Jude the Obscure (1895), by Thomas Hardy [500 pp.]
The Three Sisters (1901) and/or The Cherry Orchard (1904), by Anton Chekhov [70 pp/each + ?? talk to me]
Any collection of Anton Chekhov’s short stories (1879-1904) [?? talk to me]
Ethan Frome (1911), The House of Mirth (1905), The Age of Innocence (1920), by Edith Wharton [120, 350, 440 pp.]