Foreword: Here follows a short paper I wrote for my Tolstoy professor after we studied Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. The task was to write an autobiographical account from a time in our childhood, and afterward to analyse the process we went through to write it, in order to better understand Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, andContinue reading “A Literary Experiment in Autobiographical Fiction”
Category Archives: Academic
A Winding Garden Toward Enlightenment or Despair: How Anna Karenina Cultivates the Mind, Bears Relevance, and Leads to Existential Crises
Foreword: Here follows a short paper I wrote for a university class on Tolstoy which attempted to answer the question: Is 150-year-old literature such as Tolstoy’s still relevant to a contemporary reader’s every-day life, and if so, how? I have edited it some, and have removed all major spoilers of the novel Anna Karenina, butContinue reading “A Winding Garden Toward Enlightenment or Despair: How Anna Karenina Cultivates the Mind, Bears Relevance, and Leads to Existential Crises”
Sweat and Blood to Save One’s Soul: The Principles of Work and Suffering in Čapek’s RUR
‘O Adam, Adam! No longer will you have to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow; you will return to Paradise, where you were nourished by the hand of God. You will be free and supreme; you will have no other task, no other work, no other cares than to perfect your being.Continue reading “Sweat and Blood to Save One’s Soul: The Principles of Work and Suffering in Čapek’s RUR”
Fitting Anna Karenina into a New Dress: Adaptation and Cinematic Technique in Anna Karenina (2012)
Foreword: Here follows a term paper I wrote last semester for my university class under Tolstoy scholar Ani Kokobobo, PhD. This should be of interest if you have read Anna Karenina, or seen the 2012 film adaptation (Keira Knightley), or both. I discuss not only the works themselves but the nature of adapting a bookContinue reading “Fitting Anna Karenina into a New Dress: Adaptation and Cinematic Technique in Anna Karenina (2012)”
And You Will Be Hated
Foreword Here follows an academic paper I wrote in answer to the question of why Catholic Polish priests were singled out for persecution in the Holocaust. The vast majority of my research comes from The Priest Barracks, and this is almost a summary of the book, especially since for this blog post I veered somewhatContinue reading “And You Will Be Hated”
Finding Happiness in Dystopia: Classical Notions of Freedom & Happiness in Zamyatin’s ‘We’
In his novel We, Zamyatin presents among his key themes the pursuit for happiness two opposing ideas of freedom. I intend to show the linkage between the concepts of happiness and freedom within We, arguing that Zamyatin presents something similar to the classical notions of these two things: That happiness is the personal experience oneContinue reading “Finding Happiness in Dystopia: Classical Notions of Freedom & Happiness in Zamyatin’s ‘We’”
The Curious Critic 