Unit RUSSIAN LITERATURE I
- Course
- Foreign languages and cultures
- Study-unit Code
- GP004918
- Curriculum
- In all curricula
- Teacher
- Andrea Lena Corritore
- Teachers
-
- Andrea Lena Corritore
- Hours
- 54 ore - Andrea Lena Corritore
- CFU
- 9
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2026
- Offered
- 2026/27
- Learning activities
- Caratterizzante
- Area
- Letterature straniere
- Sector
- SLAV-01/A
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian
- Contents
- Russian Literature of the Early Twentieth Century: Between Transitions and Ruptures.
This course offers an introduction to the study of Russian literature in the transitional period between the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth – one of the most intense and innovative moments in Russian culture. Through the analysis of representative literary texts and engagement with the historical and cultural context of the era, the course aims to provide a critical overview of the principal currents, poetics, and figures that shaped literary production from Symbolism and the avant-gardes through the prose of the 1920s and the establishment of socialist realism. - Reference texts
- Reference Monographs: N. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, Oxford, Oxford University Press (any edition; selected chapters); Letteratura russa. Dal primo Novecento all'inizio del nuovo secolo, ed. by A.P. Bonola, M. Calusio, D. Rebecchini; Storia della civiltà letteraria russa, directed by M. Colucci and R. Picchio, vol. II: Il Novecento, Turin, Utet, 1997 (selected chapters; not available for purchase, held in the University library). Critical essays on individual authors.
Primary Texts: A. Blok: a selection of poems; The Twelve. V. Khlebnikov: poems; Zangezi. I. Babel': Red Cavalry; Odessa Tales. M. Bulgakov: The Heart of a Dog; The Master and Margarita.
Additional texts and handouts will be provided by the instructor during the course. Specific course information and teaching materials will be available on the Unistudium platform: https://www.unistudium.unipg.it/unistudium/login/index.php, on the page dedicated to the course Russian Literature I.
Working students and non-attending students must arrange the syllabus and any additional materials required for exam preparation in advance with the instructor.
Students with disabilities and/or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) and/or ADHD or ADD who have uploaded a regular certification into SOL can apply for the compensatory tools provided by current regulation (e.g., textbooks in accessible digital format; study materials in accessible formats: presentations, handouts, and exercises, provided if necessary in advance of lessons, see www.unipg.it/disabilita-e-dsa). For further information, please contact the Department Referent (Dr. Alessandra Di Pilla: alessandra.dipilla@unipg.it). - Educational objectives
- This course opens the three-year programme dedicated to the study of Russian literature and represents for many students one of their first encounters with literary study at university level. Situated in the first year of the degree course, it introduces the complexity of literary enquiry by relating texts to the historical, cultural, political and artistic context from which they emerge, with particular attention to the transition between the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth – a period of extraordinary vitality and profound transformation in Russian culture. Students will be guided towards an understanding of cultural and literary phenomena in their specificity and in their mutual interaction, learning to grasp the dynamics that bind texts to the historical and ideological contexts in which they were produced.
Knowledge and understanding.
By the end of the course, students will have acquired a general knowledge of the principal developments in Russian literature between the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, including familiarity with the historical events, cultural movements, literary schools and authors that shaped Russian and Soviet culture of the period. They will develop a closer understanding of some of the most representative voices of the era – Blok, Khlebnikov, Babel', Bulgakov – and of the historical, cultural, artistic and political processes that shaped them. They will also acquire critical tools for the reading of literary texts from a historical and comparative perspective.
Skills
The course contributes to the development of the following competencies:
– command of an appropriate vocabulary for describing historical, literary and artistic phenomena in the Russian and Soviet context between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;
– ability to analyse complex poetic and literary texts, including those not previously discussed in class, by applying the critical tools acquired and relating them to their cultural and ideological context;
– ability to compare divergent critical interpretations, formulate reasoned evaluations, and argue a personal position with rigour and coherence, within the limits appropriate to undergraduate study at first-year level;
– ability to express clearly, both orally and in writing, knowledge and arguments relating to the texts and authors on the syllabus, with terminological appropriateness and logical organisation of thought;
– development of independent study strategies and the ability to navigate the relevant bibliography, with a view to progressively expanding one's familiarity with the field of literary studies. - Prerequisites
- Students are expected to have, at the start of the course, a basic knowledge of European and non-European history of the twentieth century, with particular attention to the principal political, cultural and social events that shaped the century.
- Teaching methods
- The course is organised as follows: lectures; reading with commentary and analysis of passages from literary works, in Italian translation and in the original language (also in seminar format with the active participation of students). Students with disabilities and/or specific learning disorders (SLD), following consultation with the instructor, may request teaching materials in accessible formats (presentations, handouts, exercise sheets), provided if necessary in advance of classes, as well as the use of other technological aids during independent study. For general information, please consult the University Services page at https://lettere.unipg.it/home/disabilita-e-dsa and contact the Departmental Disability Officer (Prof. A. Di Pilla). The University of Perugia has established that 11 categories of students may be admitted to distance learning. Students who may be interested are invited to verify the possibility of attending classes remotely at the following page: Procedura DAD - Università degli Studi di Perugia (unipg.it).
In the academic year 2025/2026, the University of Perugia has established that 12 categories of students may be admitted to distance learning. Students who may be interested are invited to enquire at the administrative offices about the possibility of attending classes via synchronous online teaching. - Other information
- Attendance is compulsory for at least 60% of classes. Students who are unable to attend due to timetable conflicts or other justifiable reasons must contact the instructor during office hours to arrange an individual syllabus, no later than the end of the first month of the course. Office hours will be published on the instructor's personal page.
Students with disabilities and/or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) and/or ADHD or ADD: for any information on the University’s dedicated services, please consult the webpage www.unipg.it/disabilita-e-dsa and contact the Department Referent (prof. Alessandra Di Pilla: alessandra.dipilla@unipg.it). - Learning verification modality
- The final examination consists of an oral interview held at the end of the course.
Assessment of knowledge: Questions will cover general topics in history and literature; the texts analysed during classes, with particular attention to their contextualisation within the relevant historical and literary period; the life and work of the authors studied; the analysis and interpretation of their works; and the critical orientations associated with the texts examined in the course.
Assessment of skills: The evaluation will take into account the quality of oral expression, in particular the correct use of the concepts required to describe the literary, artistic, cultural and political phenomena of the period. Also assessed will be the ability to articulate complex ideas and arguments, to organise and prioritise information in a logical and coherent manner, and to synthesise it with clarity.
Assessment criteria: The final grade will be based in equal measure on: the breadth and depth of the knowledge acquired, familiarity with the authors and texts studied, and the ability to contextualise and comment on them critically; and the quality of oral expression, in terms of conceptual rigour, clarity of argument, and originality of personal elaboration.
The interview generally lasts between 30 and 40 minutes.
Students with disabilities and/or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) and/or ADHD or ADD who have uploaded a regular certification into SOL: for examinations (written and/or oral), they may request the compensatory tools, dispensatory measures, and inclusive technologies provided for by current regulations (see www.unipg.it/disabilita-e-dsa), by contacting the Department Referent (prof. Alessandra Di Pilla: alessandra.dipilla@unipg.it). - Extended program
- Russian Literature of the Early Twentieth Century: Between Transitions and Ruptures.
This course provides an initial introduction to Russian literature of the period spanning from the last decade of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth, with particular attention to the transition from the literary avant-gardes to the consolidation of socialist realism. Through the analysis of representative texts, the course examines the principal currents of the period – Decadentism and Symbolism, Futurism, the prose of the 1920s, socialist realism – against the backdrop of the major historical and cultural upheavals of the era, foremost among them the October Revolution.
A transversal thread running through the course is the category of montage: understood not only as a compositional technique derived from Soviet cinema of the 1920s, but as a broader aesthetic and cognitive paradigm capable of describing the ways in which Russian and Soviet culture of those years organised reality – through fragmentation, simultaneity, collision of registers, and narrative discontinuity. The course traces how montage progressively ceased to be a technique specific to the historical avant-gardes and became a general cultural form of modern perception.
Course Structure.
Contexts and Coordinates: Historical and cultural introduction to the period. The crisis of positivism and the emergence of Russian modernism. Decadentism and Symbolism: theoretical premises and poetic season.
Aleksandr Blok: The symbolist poet between mystical aspiration and historical disenchantment. Blok's ambivalent relationship with the Revolution as apocalyptic and regenerative event. Texts: a selection of poems; The Twelve.
Cubo-Futurism. Velimir Khlebnikov: The programme of radical renewal of language. Zaum', time as system, linguistic utopia. Texts: a selection of poems; Zangezi.
Montage as Cultural Form: Soviet cinema of the 1920s as theoretical laboratory: Eisenstein and the theory of montage.
The Prose of the 1920s. Isaak Babel': Short prose as a form of fragmentation and estranged vision. Violence, irony, textual discontinuity. Texts: Odessa Tales; Red Cavalry.
Mikhail Bulgakov: The narrative of the 1920s between the grotesque and the critique of power. Satire as a form of resistance; the fantastic as a critical device. Texts: The Heart of a Dog; The Master and Margarita.
Towards Socialist Realism: The literary debate of the 1920s: RAPP, LEF, Pereval. The First Congress of Soviet Writers (1934) and the codification of socialist realism. The fate of the avant-garde writers in the 1930s. The Master and Margarita as posthumous and subversive text. - Obiettivi Agenda 2030 per lo sviluppo sostenibile
- 4, 5, 16