Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—a sweeping tale of marriage and sexual freedom, atheism and faith, tradition and modernity, set against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming Russian empire—was controversial from its first publication. Amidst a bewildered nobility struggling to maintain economic and political hegemony in a society no longer organized around human bondage, the eponymous Anna, a St. Petersburg socialite, embarks upon a scandalous, very public, and ultimately tragic affair with the dashing cavalry officer, Count Aleksei Vronsky—exposing, in painstaking detail, the extent to which the personal is political and how our most intimate relationships are mediated through social and political upheaval. Tolstoy asks his readers: Where does the border between love and lust lie? What do we owe our partners? How do our social networks define who we are? What do elites owe to the rest of society? What happens when one ruling class gives way to another? What does it mean for our happiness and comfort to be predicated on the suffering of another?
In this course, we will read the entirety of Anna Karenina from a multifaceted critical perspective that addresses the themes of love, sex, gender, family life, religion, freedom, unfreedom, industrialization, the birth of capital, modernity, and tradition that structure the novel. What were the social and political currents coursing through 19th century Russia—from the abolition of serfdom to industrialization and the rise of capitalism? And, concurrently: how did seismic changes in conventional attitudes towards women, family, and sexuality find aesthetic expression in what is recognized as one of the most exquisitely observed novelistic treatments of a long and turbulent century?
“Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina” will also run online on Tuesdays, starting January 28th.
