"Chekhov's keen powers of observation have been remarked by both memoirists who knew him well and scholars who approach him only through the written record and across the distance of many decades. To apprehend Chekhov means seeing how Chekhov sees, and the author's remarkable vision is understood as deriving from his occupational or professional training and identity. But we have failed to register, let alone understand, just what a central concern for Chekhov himself, and how deeply problematic, were precisely issues of seeing and being seen."--from the Introduction Michael C. Finke explodes a century of critical truisms concerning Chekhov's objective eye and what being a physician gave him as a writer in a book that foregrounds the deeply subjective and self-reflexive aspects of his fiction and drama. In exploring previously unrecognized seams between the author's life and his verbal art, Finke profoundly alters and deepens our understanding of Chekhov's personality and behaviors, provides startling new interpretations of a broad array of Chekhov's texts, and fleshes out Chekhov's simultaneous pride in his identity as a physician and devastating critique of turn-of-the-century medical practices and ideologies. Seeing Chekhov is essential reading for students of Russian literature, devotees of the short story and modern drama, and anyone interested in the intersection of literature, psychology, and medicine.

Dependents and with the tuberculosis that was to kill him at age forty-four. He was one of the greatest playwrights and short-story writers ever born, but he was torn between medicine and literature, as he was between family and friends, between a longing for solitude and a need for company. When he was a child, his family life was at times made a hell by a monstrous father, a possessive sister, and delinquent elder brothers; his own adult life was tortuously balanced between the affections of a series of mistresses and a marriage to an actress that was not as idyllic as it has traditionally been painted. Donald Rayfield's biography strips the whitewash from the image of Chekhov and shows us what lay behind his restrained, ironic facade. The result does not denigrate him but shows him in the full heroism of his brief, prodigiously creative life. Rayfield has spent more than three years combing the Chekhov archives all over Russia (Chekhov was a restless traveler for the whole of his life, going from Siberia to the Cote d'Azur) and has uncovered thousands of documents and letters from Chekhov's lovers, friends, and family, most of them never published before, which cumulatively tell of a life far more entangled and turbulent than we ever previously suspected. The many cuts made in Soviet and foreign editions of Chekhov's and his wife's letters have been restored; what once was hidden is now revealed.

Anton Chekhov's representations of children have generally remained on the periphery of scholarly attention. Yet his stories about children, which focus on communication and the emergence of personhood, also illuminate the process by which the author forged his own language of expression and occupy a uniquely important place within his work. Chekhov's Children explores these stories – dating from Chekhov's early writings in the 1880s – as a distinct body of work unified by the theme of maturation and by the creation of a literary model of childhood. Nadya Peterson describes the evolution of Chekhov's model and its connection with the prevalent views on children in the literature, education, medicine, and psychology of his time. As with his later writing, Chekhov's portrayals of young protagonists exhibit complexity, diversity, and a broad reach across the writer's cultural and literary landscape, dealing with such themes as the distinctiveness of a child's perspective, the relationship between the worlds of children and adults, the nature of child development, socialization, gender differences, and sexuality. While reconstructing a particular literary model of childhood, this book brings to light a body of discourse on children, childhood development, and education prominent in Russia in the late nineteenth century. Chekhov's Children accords this topic the significance it deserves by placing Chekhov's model of childhood within the broad context of his time and reassessing established notions about the child's place in the author's oeuvre.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

The Routledge Companion to Michael Chekhov brings together Chekhov specialists from around the world - theatre practitioners, theorists, historians and archivists – to provide an astonishingly comprehensive assessment of his life, work and legacy. This volume aims to connect East and West; theatre theory and practice. It reconsiders the history of Chekhov’s acting method, directing and pedagogy, using the archival documents found across the globe: in Russia, England, America, Germany, Lithuania and Switzerland. It presents Chekhov’s legacy and ideas in the framework of interdisciplinary theatre practices and theories, as well as at the crossroads of cultures, in the context of his forays into such areas as Western mime and Asian cosmology. This remarkable Companion, thoughtfully edited by two leading Chekhov scholars, will prove invaluable to students and scholars of theatre, theatre practitioners and theoreticians, and specialists in Slavic and transcultural studies. Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu is Director of Research at the National Center For Scientific Research, and Assistant-Director of Sorbonne-CNRS Institute EUR’ORBEM. She is an historian of theatre and specialist in Russian and Soviet theatre. Yana Meerzon is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa. Her book publications include Adapting Chekhov: The Text and Its Mutations, co-edited with Professor J. Douglas Clayton, University of Ottawa (Routlegde, 2012).

Chekhov is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential literary figures of modern times. Russia's preeminent playwright, he played a significant role in revolutionizing the modern theatre. His impact on prose fiction writing is incalculable: he helped define the modern short story. Beginning with an engaging account of Chekhov's life and cultural context in nineteenth-century Russia, this book introduces the reader to this fascinating and complex personality. Unlike much criticism of Chekhov, it includes detailed discussions of both his fiction and his plays. The Introduction traces his concise, impressionistic prose style from early comic sketches to mature works such as 'Ward No. 6' and 'In the Ravine'. Examining Chekhov's development as a dramatist, the book considers his one-act vaudevilles and early works, while providing a detailed, act-by-act analysis of the masterpieces on which his reputation rests: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

The Moscow Art Theatre is still recognized as having more impact on modern theatre than any company in the world. This lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced facsimile edition of a Russian journal from 1914 documents, photographically, the premieres of all of Anton Chekhov's plays produced by the Moscow Art Theatre, including: *The Seagull, *Three Sisters *Uncle Vanya *Cherry Orchard *Ivanov. Edited by renowned theatre historian Vera Gottlieb, the volume also reproduces - for the first time in an English translation - introductions by Stanislavsky's collaborators Nemirovich-Danchenko and Efros. With 175 unique photographs, this is a significant contribution to our understanding of the origins of today's theatre.