Eugene Onegin and the Culture of Its Time

The course is designed as a close reading of the most acclaimed of Pushkin’s works – his novel in verse Eugene Onegin (1823-1831). The novel was written and published in separate chapters over several years, and readers remained in suspense as they did not know what would happen next with its heroes. Students will be repeating the story of the first Pushkin’s readers over six weeks. Pushkin’s work is an encyclopedia of Russian culture of the first thirty years of the 19th century. Thus the course will be interdisciplinary: students will read simultaneously poems written by Pushkin and his contemporaries, and will listen to the music, ballets, and operas that Pushkin’s heroes were watching. We will examine theater programs as well as a design of a country estate in Pushkin’s time. Students will study aristocratic salon culture, the role of duels, and restaurant menus in both capital cities and the countryside. The course also includes video materials from Peter Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin and one contemporary movie based on Pushkin’s plot. Students will write three short response papers and a final exam.