Tolstoy Assignment | Online Assignment

In a clear, well-organized, thesis-driven paper of at least 5 (and at most 8) pages (formatted with 1 ”margins on all sides and written in a legible 12 point font), please address one of the following prompts. You should support your claims with textual evidence, citing any quotations or paraphrased text with in-line parenthetical citations like this (Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 172). Please include a Works Cited section at the end. Beyond making reference to the texts we ‘ ve read throughout the year, no outside research is required or expected.

In a clear, well-organized, thesis-driven paper of at least 5 (and at most 8) pages (formatted with 1” margins on all sides and written in a legible 12 point font), please address one of the following prompts. You should support your claims with textual evidence, citing any quotations or paraphrased text with in-line parenthetical citations like this (Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 172). Please include a Works Cited section at the end. Beyond making reference to the texts we’ve read throughout the year, no outside research is required or expected.

Your papers will be graded according to the following rubric:

Concision & clarity:                 20

Spelling & grammar:                20

Following instructions:           20

Organization & structure:     20

Thesis & citations:                     20

Topics

1. Revise an earlier response paper. If you’ve already started to develop an idea of interest to you in an earlier response paper, your final paper may be a revision and expansion of that earlier paper, taking my comments and suggestions into account.

2. Several of Tolstoy’s works take on the concept of (the) truth. Choose two works and compare their concern with representing or interrogating our access to the truth. Who gets to tell truthful stories, and who does not? If the hero of certain stories is the truth, what happens to the characters themselves – do they serve as instruments of the truth? What about the disparity between Tolstoy’s late, Christian-focused morality tales with their supernatural elements and miracles, and his earlier works that focused on the realistic descriptions of war?

3. Close read and compare two character introductions. Consider, for example, the effect of gradually revealing more and more information about Stiva, our focal character for the start of Anna Karenina, and compare it to Levin, who bursts into the scene right away. Are characters on different levels of their texts’ moral hierarchies introdued differently? Do Tolstoy’s character introductions change substantially over time? Consider comparing one early introduction (the sharply resolving focus on Mikhailov in “Sevastopol in May”) and one later character introduction (the gradual revelation of different facets of Hadji Murat’s character).

4. “Ways of knowing.” Do Tolstoy’s characters and narrators knowthings in the same way? What about paralepsis, or narrative omniscience? Consider examining two of the scenes that engage epistemological problems (or problems of knowledge, of ways of knowing) across different character groups, especially those who experience the same event (the revelation of an adulterous spose; the testing of their faith; marriage and marriage proposals, etc.). Closely read a scene in which two characters connect with each other in a seemingly supernatural, impossibly accurate way (Kitty and Levin writing in chalk comes to mind). Taking the problem of different “ways of knowing” as your starting point, consider to whom these moments of connection and intimacy and accuracy are opposed. Did Anna and Vronsky used to share such a connection, but lost it?

5. Technology, modernity, and the city. Throughout his works, Tolstoy explores and continually returns to several problematic issues: the seemingly corruptive influence of modernity (incluidng both technology and art). What role is served by modernity (and modern technology) in his works, particularly in Anna Karenina? Think of the telegrams that come at inopportune times, or the ones that are misread (not to mention the trains and railway stations…). In what other ways do Tolstoy’s works comment on issues of modernity? Consider problems of education, of reform, of “the women question,” of the role played by the city as opposed to life in the country. How do these issues of modernity shape the characters and plots of his work? Consider taking a single image as your focus (the railway, the telegram) or, alternatively, examining how two different characters or character sets react to or are shaped by their relationship with these issues (Anna and Vronsky vs. Levin and Kitty? Tsar Nicholas vs. Hadji Murat?)

6. How does Tolstoy challenge his readers ethically? We noted back in the first week of class that “Sevastopol in December” conferred visibility on a set of wartime atrocities, and in so doing turned the act of seeing (as well as our act of reading) into an ethically fraught process. Compare the at-times direct address of this early story (in which we are told what we see, and how we feel) with the ways the reader is implicated by the text in later stories. Are we put on the spot by “The Kreutzer Sonata” as we are a party to Pozdnyshev’s horrible confession? Do the late Christian morality tales (either those written for the masses, or for educated audiences) direct us to believe a certain way? The narrator at the end of “Sevastopol in May” hesitates, and wonders if telling this story has been worth it; does this invite our participation, too? What about Anna Karenina, which invites us to identify with characters early-on, like Stiva, only to reveal their truly low moral standing? And what of Anna’s constant reading of novels, by which she emplots her life and, eventually, ends it: are we being called out? Consider comparing two works that directly address, or at least implicate, the reader in a challenging ethical problem.

7. Peasants, children, and other marginal characters. Certain characters in Tolstoy always seem to be positive. Write a paper that closely reads two scenes in which characters are revealed to be unquestionably positive, or which places them high-up on the moral hierarhy of their respective works. What do they share in common? What makes these horses, trees, peasants, and children such positive characters? Is their positive evaluation complicated by their relegation to role models against which to judge the inevitably more interesting, more fleshed-out characters in the works in which they appear? Consider in particular peasants in Anna Karenina, who exist on the margin for Levin, yet also come to define his final moral revelation in Part 8; or the role played by children (Dolly’s, Anna’s) in Anna Kareninaor The Death of Ivan Ilych.