University of Chicago Basic Program
GREAT SHORTER WORKS OF LEO TOLSTOY and THOMAS
MANN - SESSION TWO
Spring 2015 Tuesday Days (10:00 AM - 1:15 PM )
Claudia Traudt [email protected] 312-925-3778
This Spring Quarter 2015, we will juxtapose additional shorter masterworks
of Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Mann
Tolstoy and Thomas Mann are two of the continent’s - and the world’s - great storytellers. They
are riveting in the grip of their narrations, and uncanny in the penetration of their psychological,
emotional, aesthetic, moral and philosophical understandings.
In this Spring Quarter Session Two of this alumni class, we will engage and immerse in
Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness,” “The Prisoner of the Caucasus,” “The Diary of a Madman,” “The
Devil,” “After the Ball, “The Forged Coupon” and the wonderful 1862 novella The Cossacks.
In our Thomas Mann component, we will engage and immerse in the short story “A Man and His
Dog,” the novella The Black Swan, something of an unsettling “companion piece” to “Death in
Venice” from the female perspective, and the 1954 novel-length Confessions of Felix Krull,
Confidence Man (The Early Years), grown from the title character first appearing in the tale
written in 1911, and published as the short story “Felix Krull” in 1936.
Wk
Date
Assignment (Read and prepare through passage indicated)
1
3/31
Begin Leo Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness ”
Begin Thomas Mann’s “A Man and His Dog”
2
4/7
Tolstoy - “Family Happiness” - through Part 2, Ch. 1 - p. 69
Mann - “A Man and His Dog” - through conclusion
3
4/14
4
4/21 Tolstoy - “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “The Diary of a Madman” - p. 38
Mann - The Black Swan - p. 104 (thru line ending”...us women on such crowning days.)
5
4/28
Tolstoy - “Family Happiness” - through conclusion
Mann - The Black Swan
- p. 60 (through line ending”...a battle which she
fought with varying results.”)
Tolstoy - “The Devil”
- the complete story
Mann - The Black Swan
- through conclusion
Begin Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years) - Book One, Ch. 5, p.30
(syllabus continues)
Tolstoy-Mann (Session Two) Spring Quarter 2015 - syllabus page two
Wk
Date
Assignment (Read and prepare through passage indicated)
6
5/5
Tolstoy - “After the Ball” - complete // and begin “The Forged Coupon”
through Part 1, Ch. VI, p.316
Mann - Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years) - through Book
Two, Ch. V, p. 105
7
5/12
Tolstoy - “The Forged Coupon” - through conclusion
Mann - Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years) - through Book
Two, Ch. IX, p. 181
8
5/19
Tolstoy - The Cossacks - through Chapter 14, p. 60
Mann - Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years) - through Book
Three, Ch. IV, p. 252
9
5/26 Tolstoy - The Cossacks - through Chapter 24, p. 105
Mann - Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years) - through Book Three, Ch. VIII, p.321
10
6/2
Tolstoy - The Cossacks - through conclusion
Mann - Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years) - through
conclusion // and overview of texts(syllabus continues)
Recommended editions for Spring Quarter 2015:
Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (tr. Pevear and Volokhonsky) NY:
Vintage Classics, 2009 (ISBN 978-0553212983)
Family Happines. (tr. J.D. Duff) NY: Harper Perennial, 2009 (ISBN 9780061773730)
The Cossacks. (tr. Peter Constantine) NY: Modern Library Classics / Random
House, 2006 (ISBN 978-0812975048)
Thomas Mann. Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (tr. Lowe-Porter) NY: Vintage
Classics, 1989 (ISBN 978-0679722069)
The Black Swan. (tr. Willard Trask) Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982
(ISBN 978-0520070097)
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years). (tr. Denver
Linley) NY: Vintage International / Random House, 1992 (ISBN 978-0679739043)
If you have any questions, please contact me at [email protected] or 312-925-3778.