Literature and Resistance
Summary
The relationship between literature and ideology dominates cultural currents to this day. The Russian Revolution, one of the most influential events in 20th-century history, permeates all modern and contemporary Russian literature. Since the 19th century, with political movements and artistic schools such as Decembrist revolutionary romanticism, nihilism, or socialist realism, Russian literature has reflected on opposition to authoritarianism, serving as an ideological engine for revolution while also being a space for resistance and dissent against the totalitarianism of the socialist revolution itself. Using the example of the Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet experience, this course aims to provide tools for reflecting on literary texts of resistance and political commitment in other literary traditions as well.
What Do We Study
The course is designed as a historical journey through revolutionary and resistance literature in Russia and the Soviet Union, aiming to trace the ethical and political commitment of Russian writers and intellectuals as one of their main identity pillars. The studied fiction texts change each course. These are Russian narrative, lyrical, and dramatic texts spanning the 19th to the 21st centuries.
Which is the Line of Thought
Texts on literature, politics, and commitment will be read.
Theoretical and Practical Approaches
On Russian literature and resistance:
Div. Autors. Histoire de la littérature russe. Le XXe siècle (L’Age d’argent). Fayard. Paris. 1987; Le XXe siècle (La Révolution et les années vingt). Paris, 1989; Le XXe siècle (Gels et dégels). Paris, 1990.
Figes, Orlando i Boris Kolonitskii. Interpretar la Revolucion rusa: el lenguaje y los símbolos de 1917, Historia Biblioteca Nueva, Universitat de València, 2013.
Franklin, Simon, Rebecca Reich i Emma Widdis, The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Glisic, Iva. The Futurist Files: Avant-Garde, Politics, and Ideology in Russia, 1905–1930. DeKalb. Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.
Serge, Victor. Literatura y Revolución. Júcar, 1978.
Trotski, Leon Literatura y Revolución. Juan Pablos Editor, 1973.
Widdis, Emma. Socialist Senses: Film, Feeling, and the Soviet Subject 1917–1940'. Indiana University Press, 2017.
Texts of resistance and commitment:
Ardolino, Francesco & Elena Losada, eds. Violència i Identitat. Edicions de la UB, 2017.
Aronica, Daniela. El Neorrealismo italiano. Síntesis, 2004.
Baumeister, Andrea T., & John Horton, eds. Literature and the Political Imagination. Routledge, 1996.
Carbó, Ferran, Dolors Jiménez & Ramon X. Rosselló, eds. Les literatures catalana i francesa: postguerra i engagement. Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2000.
Cavarero, Adriana. Orrorismo. Feltrinelli, 2007.
Debord, Guy. La société du spectacle. 1967. Traducció al català: https://ca.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Societat_de_l%27Espectacle.
Fanon, Frantz. Els condemanats de la terra. 1961. Tigre de paper, 2020.
Hawkes, David. Ideology. Routledge, 1996.
Simbor, Vicent. El realisme compromès en la narrativa catalana de postguerra. Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 2005.
Trodd, Zoe, ed. American Protest Literature. Harvard University Press, 2006.