EEER 36 Leo Tolstoy's Art and Thought
From childhood to the end of his life, Tolstoy struggled to overcome his fear of death. As he himself put the problem, ‘Is there any meaning in my life which the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?’ In his quest for bulwarks against that fear, he studied the great philosophers and he examined closely the value system of the peasants. He found temporary relief in war and in marriage, but the definitive solution always eluded him. The evolution of this theme, and the formal devices by which Tolstoy expressed it in his prose, will be traced in the major novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The course will conclude with a brief examination of the prose that Tolstoy produced after his conversion. Taught in English. Open to all classes.