Approaches to Teaching Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
Editor(s): Liza Knapp, Amy Mandelker
Pages: ix & 226 pp.
Published: 2003
ISBN: 9780873529051 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873529044 (hardcover)
"The essays reflect an awareness of the latest research on the novel, and the range of topics and list of contributors are impressive. Those less familiar with Russian literature or with Tolstoy will find something new on virtually every page, but even Russian specialists will find inspiration from many of the essays."
Barry Scherr, Dartmouth College
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is probably the most often taught nineteenth-century Russian novel in the American academy. Teachers have found that including this virtuoso work of art on a syllabus reaps many rewards, especially in courses that connect texts thematically (e.g., Adultery in the Novel) or theoretically (e.g., Russian Literature into Film, Theory of Narrative). It also stirs up heated classroom discussion--on sex and sexuality, dysfunction in the family, gender roles, society's hypocrisy and cruelty. But because of translation and transliteration problems, the peculiarity of Russian names and terms, the unfamiliarity of Russian geography and history, and the very size of the novel, teaching it presents challenges.
This volume, the seventy-eighth in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching series, provides a comprehensive resource for dealing with these difficulties. The introduction contains a section on the complicated issue of names in Anna Karenina and another on the setting: time and space in the novel, Moscow versus Petersburg, the Russian country estate, travel, the railroad. Part 1, "Materials," discusses and evaluates English translations and Russian editions of Anna Karenina and recommends works in the critical literature. In part 2, "Approaches," twenty-two seasoned instructors of the novel describe their classroom experiences and suggest ways of introducing students to this powerful work; topics include ideas in Anna Karenina, agrarian issues, Tolstoy's antiphilosophical philosophy, Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky, Anna's dreams, and the reader's moral education.
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
Introduction to the Volume
A Note on Citation and Transliteration
Teaching Anna Karenina
Amy Mandelker
The Names
Liza Knapp
The Setting
Liza Knapp
Part 1: MATERIALS
Russian Editions and English Translations
Liza Knapp
Recommended Readings for Instructors and Students
Amy Mandelker and Liza Knapp
Part 2: APPROACHES
Anna Karenina in Tolstoy's Life, Thought, and Times
Anna on the Installment Plan: Teaching Anna Karenina through the History
of Its Serial Publication
William M. Todd III
The Daily Miracle: Teaching the Ideas of Anna Karenina
Gary Saul Morson
The Crisis in Tolstoy and in Anna Karenina
Gary R. Jahn
Law as Limit and the Limits of the Law in Anna Karenina
Harriet Murav
Motif-Mesh as Matrix: Body, Sexuality, Adultery, and the Woman Question
Helena Goscilo
Agrarian Issues in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as a "Mirror of the Russian Revolution"
Mary Helen Kashuba and Manucher Dareshuri
Tolstoy's Antiphilosophical Philosophy in Anna Karenina
Donna Orwin
Anna Karenina in the Literary Traditions of Russia and the West
Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky and Bakhtin's Ethics of the Classroom
Caryl Emerson
Anna Karenina and the Novel of Adultery
Judith Armstrong
Anna Reading and Women Reading in Russian Literature
David A. Sloane
Reading Anna: Opera, Tragedy, Melodrama, Farce
Julie A. Buckler
The Wedding Bell, the Death Knell, and Philosophy's Spell: Tolstoy's Sense of an Ending
Svetlana Evdokimova
Classroom Approaches to Anna Karenina
The Opening of Anna Karenina
Kate Holland
The Night Journey: Anna Karenina's Return to Saint Petersburg
Robert Louis Jackson
Anna's Dreams
Thomas Barran
The Moral Education of the Reader
Gina Kovarsky
Tolstoy Sees the Truth but Waits: The Consequences of Aesthetic Vision in Anna Karenina
Justin Weir
Anna Karenina through Film
Andrea Lanoux
Using Reader-Response Journals in Teaching Anna Karenina
Jason Merrill
Mapping Anna Karenina: A Creative Approach to Understanding the Novel
Mary Laurita
On a Scavenger Hunt in Tolstoy's Labyrinth of Linkages
Liza Knapp
Works Cited
Index
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