Russian Literature: Learn from Masters

Name: Russian Literature: Learn from Masters
Rating: 4.6 (48 reviews)

10 Greatest Russian Writers

Highest Rated

Created byMatt Kyoto

Last updated 12/2022

English

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What you'll learn

Understand classic Russian literature
Learn about Russian novelists
Learn how understand great novels
Learn how to analyse great literature

Course content

1 section • 14 lectures • 5h 41m total length

Introduction1:51
Discover Russian literature with an overview of major novels and influential authors, from Pushkin to Chekhov, and learn storytelling craft through timeless classics.
Alexander Pushkin Eugene Onegin27:27
Explore Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse that contrasts city cynicism with country sincerity through Tatiana and Eugene, and examines love, choice, and the superfluous man.
Mikhail Lermontov A Hero of Our Time26:42
Delve into Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, a five-story novel anchored in the Caucasus, exploring Pechorin’s Byronic masculinity, inner contradictions, and the psychology of manhood.
Nikolai Gogol Dead Souls33:14
Nikolai Gogol uses satirical, grotesque humor in Dead Souls to expose Russian corruption through Chichikov's dead serfs scheme and a gallery of landowner characters.
Ivan Goncharov Oblomov21:26
Explore Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov, the ultimate lazy aristocrat whose bed-bound life challenges Russian society’s ideals, while relationships with Stoltz and Olga reveal ambition, love, and critique of modernization.
Ivan Turgenev Fathers and Sons24:10
Explore Turgenev's fathers and sons, introducing Bazarov and Russian nihilism, and trace five conflicts—parents and children, love versus reason, west meets east, idea versus reality, life and death.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from Underground26:04
Explore how the underground man's alienation and the limits of rationality illuminate modernity, offering eight lessons on consciousness, irrationality, and self-destruction.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment11:12
This lecture analyzes Dostoevsky's crime and punishment, tracing Raskolnikov's utilitarian and rationalist ideas, the role of religion, and the novel’s interior, existential storytelling.
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot28:58
Dostoevsky's the idiot follows Prince Myshkin, an innocent, epileptic outsider who confronts death, love, money, and religion. It weighs atheism, Catholicism, and redemption.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Demons30:48
Delve into Dostoevsky's Demons, tracing nihilism, hedonism, and revolutionary plots in 1860s Russia, and compare its themes with Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and Christianity.
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov18:35
Explore the Brothers Karamazov as a murder mystery, examining religion, philosophy, and psychology through atheism, hedonism, and religious faith.
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace35:30
Tolstoy's war and peace blends history, philosophy, and fiction to show that history emerges from the will of the entire society, not heroic leaders like Napoleon.
Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina23:03
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's tale of marriage and family, follows Anna, Karenin, Vronsky, and Levin as trains, society, and duty illuminate happiness as illusion in modern life.
Anton Chekhov Short Stories32:28
Discover how Anton Chekhov revolutionized Russian literature by turning the mundane into art, pioneering minimalism, and inventing Chekhov's gun in his short stories, the father of the short story.

Requirements

No prior knowldge ir required

Description

In this course, I will tell you the story of Russian Literature. By the end of this course, you will know all the major Russian classic novels, as well as some of the most influential novelists from the Russian-speaking world.

In the first 5 videos, I will talk about 5 classic novels of Russian literature written by the first generation of the Russian writers. First, I will talk about Eugen Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, the father of modern Russian Literature, who single-handedly revolutionised the Russian Literature as wells the Russian language. Then I will discuss A Hero of Our time by Mikhail Lermontov, often considered the second most beloved poet of Russia. Then I will move on to Nikolai Gogol’s satirical stories, mainly his masterpiece, the Dead Souls as well as Ivan Gonacharov’s novel, Oblomov is another classic of Russian satire. Finally, I will talk about Ivan Turgenev, one of the most artistic of Russian writers. His masterpiece Fathers and Sons inspired both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to write their greatest novels.

In the second 5 videos, I will talk about Fyodor Dostoevsky, perhaps the most psychological Russian writer who influenced later generations of writers from around the world. I will talk about his most influential novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Demons, Notes from Underground and his magnum opus, the Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky combined crime genre with philosophy to dissect the human psyche and asked psychological as well as existentialist questions as to what makes us tick.

In the next 2 videos, I will look at the works by Leo Tolstoy, the giant of Russian Literature. I will discuss his two main novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Unlike the psychological tales of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy was more concerned with the sociological questions concerning what forces move history and civilisation as well as the role of an individual within a society. I will also discuss Anton Chekhov, the father of short stories whose tales have been immensely influential in cinema.

This course will take you on a journey of Russian Literature that’s incredibly psychologically deep, sociologically profound and artistically beautiful. This course is for anyone interested in literature in general or someone who wants to lear about Russian Literature in particular. This course is good for anyone who wants to be a writer so you can learn writing and storytelling from these giants of literature.

Who this course is for:

literature students and writers of fiction