51³ÉÈËÁÔÆæ

Course Description

Summary

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883), the great Russian novelist, left his homeland in 1854 and spent most of the rest of his life in Paris, where he died. Though he wrote in Russian, he was also a writer of pan-European cultural connections, his closest friends being Pauline (García) Viardot, a distinguished Spanish-born opera singer and composer, and Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the novelist. Our study is devoted to Turgenev and Flaubert in the belief that their ideas about technique, their personal papers, their shared values – and also their conflicts - illuminate both figures. The major works of the two friends will be closely read, as well as diaries, literary reviews, and correspondence, including Flaubert’s letters to Louise Colet, in which he discusses the composition of Madame Bovary, and his exchange with George Sand, the central female writer of the period.