GMALL- Anna Karenina & Meaning of Life

Julie Cassiday, Professor of Russian at Williams College, presents. "Widely hailed as the greatest novel ever written, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina represents the height of literary Realism and the culmination of the nineteenth-century novel of adultery. In early drafts, Tolstoy tried to condemn Anna’s decision to break her marriage vows in black and white terms. Yet the final version of Anna Karenina contains a fictional world so vast and complex that it defies any attempt to occupy a single moral position. This lecture will examine Tolstoy’s masterwork, paying special attention to its historical context, so that we can understand why a novel written almost a century and a half ago continues to enthrall readers and offer insights about the meaning of life." Recorded and made available by GNAT-TV.