The Russian author Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) is among the major short-story writers and dramatists of modern times.During the last half of the 19th century the old order in Russia was crumbl...
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Anton Chekhov is today one of the most widely known authors of nineteenth-century Russian literature. Appreciated not only in Russia and the West but also in Asia, he was a master of the short story, ...
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In the following essay, originally published in Vestnik Evropy in 1914, Grossman describes the influence of several authors, including Maupassant and Flaubert, upon Chekhov and his use of symbolism.
&...
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In the following essay, Lynd discusses Chekhov's talent for portraying ordinary people as the basis of a tragic realism.
It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense ...
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In the following essay, Brewster and Burrell discuss the various critical opinions of Chekhov, including accusations of immorality, and compare Chekhov's and Katherine Mansfield's use of...
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In the following essay, Brewster and Burrell continue their deliberation on Chekhov’s and Mansfield's short fiction.
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Although the stories we have been discussing [see previous essay] a...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1957, Poggioli comments upon Chekhov's early stories and their relative importance in anticipating the author's later, more accomplished s...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1958, Golubkov inspects Chekhov's social consciousness, which continued to maturate throughout his life, and the lyricism so prevalent in his sho...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1959, Derman dilates upon Chekhov's technique for a story's beginning and ending.
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Čexov occupies one of the highest places among ...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1960, Chizhevsky expatiates Chekhov's place in the history of Russian literature.
Chekhov still has no firm place in the history of Russian liter...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1961, Nazarenko discusses verbal imagery in Chekhov's writing.
The key to the understanding of verbal imagery is not found in a narrow linguistic...
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In the following essay, O'Connor descants the changing face of the short story, particularly with Chekhov.
There is still no satisfactory book on Anton Chekhov, and this is scarcely to be wonde...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1963, Vinogradov remarks upon speech characterization in Chekhov's short stories.
In Čexov, the devices of socio-professional speech chara...
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In the following essay, Winner discusses Chekhov's transition from light, humorous fiction to the more serious stories of the late 1880s.
The early Chekhov has been thought of only as a humoris...
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In the following essay, Winner dilates upon Chekhov's serious stories of the 1890s.
In 1890, after Chekhov's visit to the Russian penal colony on the island of Sakhalin, he became increa...
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In the following essay, Winner attempts to connect Chekhov's later works, such as “The Black Monk,” with the earlier “searching stories” in terms of their philosophi...
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In the following essay, Mathewson examines the concept of immortality in Chekhov's stories “The Kiss,” “Gusev,” “Ionyc,” and “The Lady with the ...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1968, Cicerin refutes the common claim that Chekhov's stories are clear and simple, using as examples the indecisive and conjectural speech found...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1970, Pospelov demonstrates how Chekhov used neoteric and original literary devices and principles to transcend traditional literary constructions.
The ...
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In the following essay, Kramer scrutinizes the development of the short story by Chekhov and other authors, including the connection between the nineteenth century tale and the twentieth century short...
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In the following essay, Kramer discusses ambiguities in meaning as seen in Chekhov's stories.
One could, with respect to terminology, talk about either ambiguity or paradox in describing that p...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1975, Rayfield examines the placement of Chekhov's story “The Student,” between the author's “Steppe” stories ...
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In the following essay, Hahn examines Chekhov's correspondence with the older author Grigorovich, who urged him to pursue a more careful and refined writing style, and the profound effects this...
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In the following essay, Hahn investigates creative tension in Chekhov's stories.
Among the very finest stories of 1886 and 1887 are “Easter Eve” and the better-known “Enemi...
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In the following essay, Martin discusses Chekhov's use of figurative language, including comparison, simile, and metaphor, and how abstract-to-concrete similes give expression to the author�...
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In the following essay, Rayfield considers Chekhov's short stories in relation to the latter's Sakhalin journey.
Disillusionment in literature and in critical reception was one factor th...
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In the following essay, Rayfield surveys the stories Chekhov produced while living on his Melikhovo estate during the 1890s.
The six years that Chekhov lived on his estate of Melikhovo gave him both c...
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In the following essay, Rayfield scrutinizes the peasant tales of Chekhov.
The narrator's chief preoccupation both in “The House with the Mezzanine” and “My Life” is...
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In the following essay, Rayfield ponders Chekhov's late 1890s stories depicting love.
“The House with the Mezzanine” and the stories of love, requited or not, consummated or not, ...
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The following is an abridged version of an essay that was first published in Russian in 1948. Skaftymov addresses the "question of the unity of form and content" in Chekhov's play...
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In the following excerpt, Lavrin investigates Chekhov's "method of showing the tragic nature of everyday existence in its ordinary everyday conditions. "
The impact of Chekhov on ...
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In this excerpt, Mudford explores how Chekhov's characters struggle between present despair and hope for the future.
What beautiful trees—and how beautiful, when you think of it, life o...
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Kirk provides a detailed examination of each of Chekhov's full-length plays.
Chekhov wrote his first plays at the age of eighteen, but all that survived of those efforts are the titles: a drama...
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In the excerpt below, Styan views the inducement of ironic detachment in the audience as Chekhov's most important contribution to realist theater. Styan states: "It is this effect of dis...
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In the following essay, Peace focuses on the "emotional atmosphere" or "mood" Chekhov evokes in his plays.
Chekhov, as a playwright, is the inheritor of a Russian tradition...
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In the following essay, Kane investigates Chekhov's use of language and silence in his plays, arguing: "Aware that speech, like time, is an anthropocentric effort to limit, control, and ...
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In the following essay Palievsky discusses Chekhov's positive depiction of the common people, maintaining that the writer "formed an invisible link between a high ideal and the perceptio...
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In the essay below, Esslin assesses the impact of Chekhov's revolutionary dramatic technique on the history of Western theater.
Anton Chekhov was one of the major influences in the emergence of...
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In the following essay, Styan looks at the characters, settings, plots, and moods of Chekhov's plays.
As the years pass and as Chekhov's plays are given different treatments and exposed ...
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In the following excerpt, Egri demonstrates how themes and motifs from Chekhov's short stories are incorporated into "mosaic patterns " in Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
Th...
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In the following excerpt from a work that was first published in 1950, Hingley examines the essential characteristics of Chekhovian drama.
Chekhov was admirably fitted to become the leading dramatist ...
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In this essay, Peace uncovers elements of Greek classical tragedy in The Seagull and Three Sisters.
Chekhov's real career as a dramatist may be seen as having begun with The Seagull: it marks t...
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In the essay below, Senelick surveys works that caricature and satirize Chekhov's dramas.
Parody, the late Dwight Macdonald has declared, is "an intuitive kind of literary criticism, sho...
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In this essay, Ehre discusses Chekhov's efforts to "capture common reality" in his plays.
Anton Chekhov was born in the provincial town of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov in 1860. His...
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The following is the text of an address Senelick delivered at a 1994 symposium on Chekhov's reception. Senelick traces shifts in the author's reputation over the years.
When Douglas Clay...
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In this essay, Magarshack explores Chekhov's views on art and the Russian theater of his day, as expressed in his letters and occasional writings.
The plays of Chekhov, like those of any other ...
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In this essay, Timmer traces Chekhov's use of the "bizarre, " defined as "a statement, or a situation, which has no logical place in the context or in the sequence of event...
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In the following excerpt from a work that was first published in 1966, Valency places Chekhov in the context of the social and cultural upheavals of his time.
Chekhov's drama, like Ibsen'...
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In this essay, Rexroth comments on the profound change in the nature of drama brought about by Chekhov.
It comes as a bit of a shock to sit yourself down and deliberately think, "In the first h...
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In the essay below, Priestley admires the psychological depth of Chekhov's characters, arguing: "It is this depth, where consciousness dissolves into the fathomless unconscious, where ne...
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In the following, Magarshack examines misinterpretations of Chekhov's plays by theater directors, translators, and others.
The stage is a scaffold on which the playwright is executed.
Chekhov ...
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In the essay below, Melchinger investigates the ways Chekhov overthrew the theatrical conventions of his day.
In 1902, Chekhov wrote to Alexander Tikhonov:
You say you wept over my plays. You are not...
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In the following essay, Johnson contends that a shift in Chekhov's narrative perspective during the late period of his career added greater depth and complexity to his short stories.
Raymond Ca...
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In the following excerpt, Hahn describes “The Duel” as “novelistic” in form and method, explores its theme, and compares the work to the fiction of Tolstoy.
But life is nev...
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In the following excerpt, Tulloch interprets “The Duel” in light of evolutionary degeneration theory, and views the conflict between an “ambivalence of false choice” and th...
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In the following excerpt, Pritchett analyzes “The Duel,” focusing on character and the work's “playlike architecture.”
In “The Duel” we see the conflic...
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In the following essay, Durkin investigates allusions to the writing of N. S. Laskov in “The Duel,” and examines the opposition between science and the humanities in the story.
The centr...
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In the following essay, Axelrod sees “the need for salvation and moral reform” as central to “The Duel,” and traces biblical references underlying this theme in the work.
I...
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In the following excerpt, Baldeshweiler analyzes the so-called “lyrical” short story as represented by the short fiction of Turgenev and Chekhov.
When the history of the modern short sto...
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Throughout time many authors have attempted to portray love as it truly is, but many of these authors write only of the positive things that love is. Some authors choose to vaguely describe or brie...
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Anton (Pavlovich) Chekhov
