Guided Reading of War and Peace with Dr. Jeffrey Brooks, Professor Emeritus

Guided Reading of War and Peace
Instructor: Jeffrey Brooks, Professor Emeritus
August 25 - September 29 (6 Sessions)
Tuesdays, 6:00PM - 7:30PM ET
Virtual va Zoom

Brought to you by Odyssey  

Course Description: In War and Peace Tolstoy evokes the chaos of war, a cornucopia of characters, and the complexity love and heroism. In the context of the Emancipation of the Russian serfs, he expands the realist novel to evoke folkloric Russian figures and to question the very meaning of historical inquiry. In addition to reading Richard Pevear’s and Larissa Volokhonsky’s superb translation, students will watch the 8 installments of the British TV 14th’s award-winning 2016 adaption of the novel (directed by Tom Harper). The cinematic portrayal of the three leading characters will enhance the participants’ experience of reading.

The novel abounds in unforgettable scenes that enlarge the leading characters such as the incident at the outset, in which Pierre Bestuzhev, the true hero of the novel, first dances with a bear, and then, with a drunken friend, puts animal in a coach. When a policeman stops them, they tie the officer to the bear and toss the two into the Moika, St. Petersburg’s famous river. In another sequence Prince Andre, who seeks military glory, is wounded and looking up the sky realizes the hugeness of the universe. A third, involves Natasha Rostova, Prince Andrei’s betrothed, and later Pierre’s beloved wife. She discovers one face of herself in a wild peasant dance in a hunting lodge and another when she evacuates her family from the advancing French and oversees the removal of the wounded from the Battle of Borodino. The six scheduled lectures will treat the context in which Tolstoy wrote the novel and expected it to be understood. There are no written assignments and there will be time to discuss the text and the films.

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