The course includes a first part dedicated to the analysis of the historical and literary nineteenth century in Russia. From the rise to the throne of the Romanovs to the abolition of serfdom, to the insurgency in early Decembrist terrorist attacks; from the opposition between Slavophiles and Westerners to the opposition between the generation of the "fathers" of the 40's and the generation of the "children" of the '60s. In this space we will analyze the evolution of Russian prose that, starting with the work of A.S. Pushkin, through the work of Lermontov, Gogol ', Turgenev comes to the great Russian novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. On the analysis of the line that links Gogol 'and Dostoevsky and on the contrast between the latter and Tolstoj will focus the second part of the course.