Topics in Russian Literature or Literary Theory: Russian Awakenings: Western Mysticism and Russian Culture

From the late 18th to early 20th century, Russia witnessed several "awakenings" of mysticism which tended to coincide with critical historical junctures, such as the moral crisis of Catherine II's reign (the rise of Free Masonry), a deep ideological schism in the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s (the rise of spiritualism), or the revolutionary period in the first decade of the 20th century. In this course, we will interpret each of these "awakenings" as a cultural text which symbolically expresses and performs certain tendencies that are typical for the intellectual and psychological life of a given historical period.