How Much Land Does a Man Need

James Joyce, a famous Irish writer, once declared that “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” was “the greatest story that the literature of the world knows” (qtd. in Hurn, Rachel. “How Much Land Does a Man Need.” The New Yorker, 15 Feb. 2011). Joyce might have been exaggerating, but in general, do you share his opinion of the story? What do you think Joyce saw in the story that was so worthy of praise?

Read “The Imp and the Crust,” another story by Tolstoy that is based on a folktale and also features the devil as a character. How does this story compare to “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” Do the stories have the same moral lesson? How do they differ?

Tolstoy’s belief at the time he wrote “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” was that literature should provide moral lessons that help people to live well. He thought that literature should be uplifting and communicate a simple, universal Christian truth; it should educate people and be intelligible to the common folk, not just the educated elites. He therefore thought much of Western art and literature was immoral and even rejected his own novel, Anna Karenina, which by common consent is one of the great 19th-century novels.