JAN 318 - Tolstoy: Art, Faith, Politics, Philosophy

Course Meeting Days & Times: MTThF, 9:15 AM-11:45 AM

Instructor(s): Arndt, David

Email: dda2@stmarys-ca.edu

Fee: $50

Course Description:  This will be a seminar-style discussed-based course on the works of Leo Tolstoy, who is widely considered one of the greatest novelists of all time, but who was also a memoirist, a theorist of art, a religious thinker, and a proponent of nonviolence who corresponded with Gandhi and who influenced Martin Luther King Jr. We will read his letters to Gandhi, his memoir, A Confession, selections from his treatise, What Is Art?, his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and his very great and very long novel, Anna Karenina. (We will also watch the film version of Anna Karenina written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Joe Wright.) We will end with texts by two of the thinkers he most influenced, Hind Swaraj, by Gandhi, and “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” by Martin Luther King Jr.

Credits: 3