Masterpieces in Brief: Leo Tolstoy’s Short Fiction
Tolstoy is the rare writer who not only asks his readers how they live but also how they can live better. Best known for sweeping epics like Anna Karenina and War and Peace, he was also a master of short fiction, a lesser-explored but no less impactful component of his literary legacy. These masterpieces-in-brief—Sevastopol Sketches, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and even shorter works like “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “Father Sergius”—offer a broad, rich view of the aesthetic, moral, and philosophical principles that animated his literary career and cemented his legacy in Russia and abroad. In this course, we will consider Tolstoy’s short fiction from a variety of critical and formal perspectives, from their narrative techniques to their various representations of individual and collective psychology. We will ask how these texts engage with the themes of mortality, faith, family, freedom, and modernization that structure Tolstoy’s oeuvre. How did Tolstoy’s work reflect the social and political currents coursing through 19th century Russia, from the abolition of serfdom to the rise of capital? How did seismic changes in conventional attitudes toward women, family, and sexuality find aesthetic expression in his exquisitely-observed treatments of a long and turbulent century? And what might Tolstoy teach us about finding meaning within and beyond rapidly changing societies?
The text we will use in this class is the Norton Critical Edition of Tolstoy’s Short Fiction, translated by Michael Katz.
Course Schedule
Monday, 6:30-9:30pm ETNovember 10 — December 01, 2025
4 weeks
$335.00
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