This class has three aims. First, it seeks to explore the notion of professional standards. How should scholarship be done? How does literary “science” evolve and what is the role of the individual author in both literature and scholarship? Second, we will examine a number of approaches to literary texts, all of which raise the question of scholarly contextualization. Finally, we will engage in a sustained collective analysis of Bulgakov’s Master i Margarita. We will use Bulgakov’s novel as a proving ground for various scholarly methodologies. In many respects, our exercise will be one of importation. How well do methodologies developed in the reading of English literature and scholarship “work” when applied to an important work of twentieth-century Russian prose?

Our seminars will be divided between discussion of theoretical works and close reading of Master i Margarita. Participants will be responsible for presentations that will initiate discussion of specific chapters of Bulgakov’s novel. Those taking the course for a letter grade should write a paper on some aspect of that book.

THIS CLASS IS OPEN TO ALL GRADUATE STUDENTS WITH KNOWLEDGE OF RUSSIAN. THOSE WHO HAVE TAKEN THE PROSEMINAR IN THE PAST WITH A DIFFERENT INSTRUCTOR MAY TAKE IT AGAIN

Required of all first-year graduate students in the Slavic Department, the course is open to all graduate students.