3376 - History of Russian Literature (Serge Khangulian)
Course Description
Instructor: Sergey Khangulian
History of Russian literature from the first literary monuments to the present. This period covers almost 10 centuries. One of the most interesting monuments of Old Russian literature is the chronicle called The Tale of Bygone Years ("Primary Chronicle", also known as the "Tale of Nestor the Chronicler"). This is a story associated with the beginning of Ukrainian and Russian history, with the calling of the Vikings to rule and many disputes about this in Scandinavian, Ukrainian and Russian historiography. A special stage of Russian literature is associated with the adoption of Christianity according to the Byzantine rite and the formation and development of the Russian Orthodox Church. The next major stage in the development of Russian literature is classicism, which in many features repeated the stages of development of European, especially French, classicism. The most well-known period in the history of Russian literature in Europe and America is the entire 19th century (romanticism and realism), since this period is associated with such names as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy. The next stage is the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This is the development of the so-called decadence, various types of modernist movements that already existed in Western Europe. such a movement, for example, was symbolism. The emergence of the next stage - futurism, is directly related to tectonic changes in the political system of Russia, with the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship and the creation of a new state - the USSR - in place of the Russian Empire. During the existence of the Soviet regime, a politically motivated movement called socialist realism emerged. During this period, there was official and underground, dissident literature. The modern, current stage of Russian literature has not yet received its specific name, but it is customary to call it very abstractly Russian post-modernism.
Bio: I was born in Republic of Georgia and graduated from Tbilisi State University. At the end of the five-year course of study, I received the title of Master of Philology and a position as a professor of Slavic languages at the Department of Slavic Literatures and Cultures of the same university. In 1990, I defended my PhD thesis on symbolism in Russian poetry. From 1996 to 2009 I cooperated on an individual program with the Faculty of English and Slavonic Studies at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), I have conducted research, published articles and taught. During my academic and teaching career, I have taught a variety of courses, including History of Russian literature; history of Slavic cultures; History of Russia, Poland, Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe; Slavic languages in the context of Indo-European linguistic-ethnic history; art history, etc. I speak English, Russian, Polish, German, and Georgian languages fluently.