Bloom's Modern Critical Views - Anton Chekhov (1998) (239p) [Inua].pdf

Anton Chekhov (MCV) (Bloom's Modern Critical Views) Library Binding – September, 1998
by Harold Bloom (Editor)

Series: Bloom's Modern Critical Views
Library Binding: 300 pages
Publisher: Chelsea House Publications (September 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0791047830
ISBN-13: 978-0791047835


-- Brings together the best criticism on the most widely read poets, novelists, and playwrights -- Presents complex critical portraits of the most influential writers in the English-speaking world -- from the English medievalists to contemporary writers

Editor's Note:
This volume brings together a representative selection of the best critical essays available in English on the plays and short stories of Anton Chekhov.
My Introduction is an overview of Chekhov's four major plays, taking note of their relationship to Hamlet. Novelist Virginia Woolf commences the sequence of commentary with a sensitive review of a 1920 London performance of The Cherry Orchard.
The wonderful reminiscences of Chekhov by Maxim Gorky follow, giving us the best sense of Chekhov as a person ever made available.
Eric Bentley provides his fine observations on Uncle Vanya, showing that all plot devices function superbly both as form and content, after which Raymond Williams emphasizes Chekhov's innovations in dramatic form.
The mystical Lev Shestov illuminates Chekhov's inwardness, his secular spirituality, while Francis Fergusson, considering The Cherry Orchard, shows that Chekhov reduces "the dramatic art to its ancient root."
Rums W. Mathewson Jr. considers Chekhov's influence upon modern short fiction, while the poet Howard Moss gives us the gift of the subtlest and most Chekhovian reading that Three Sisters ever has received.
Martin Esslin concentrates upon Chekhov's place within modern drama, after which Charles May gives a general overview of Chekhov's relation to the modern short story. Peter Szondi briefly meditates upon renunciation in Chekhov's dramas, and in David Cole's examination of The Sea Gull, the acts of reading within the play are seen as central to characterization.
Michael C. Finke studies "At Sea," Chekhov's first published story, finding in it the writer's lifelong obsession with Hamlet.
Robert Louis Jackson's analysis of Chekhov's story "The Enemies" finds in it the ancient Greek understanding that character is fate, while Liza Knapp's account of the famous story "Ward Six" emphasizes how directly Chekhov works upon his readers' sensibilities.
This volume closes with Gary Saul Morson's exegesis of Uncle Vanya, where the high theatricality of the play is stressed.