Dr. Vera Zubarev
CHEKHOV ON STAGE & SCREEN
RUSS426601-2007,
LENGTH: 12 weeks
NOTE: All papers should be submitted no later than a week after the last
class.
WEEK I. Introduction to the course. Chekhov’s biography. Chekhov’s stylistic features. Positional and combinational style in literature and chess.
The positional style in The Steppe. Viewing excerpts from Adaptation and 8&1/2.
Assignment:
Read Week 1
WEEK II. Dramatic Genre as an Unelaborated Category "Dramatic Genre as an Unelaborated Category" The Aristotelian school: a survey.
Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. A new classification of the dramatic genre. Types of potentials and the dramatic genre.
Characters’ predisposition and potential in The Seagull.
Assignment:
Read Week 2
WEEK III. The Seagull on screen. Viewing and comparing scenes from different screen versions of The Seagull.
Assignment:
Read Week 3
Read In the Graveyard
Read The Grasshopper
WEEK IV. Survival and development in comedy. Death of the main characters in Chekhov’s comedies. The role of the last names in evaluation of characters’ potential.
Discussion of deaths in The Grasshopper, In the Graveyard and The Seagull.
Assignment:
Read Unlce Vanya
WEEK V. Chekhov’s comedy as the Comedy of a New Type (CNT). Balzac & Chekhov. The Wood Demon and Unlce Vanya.
Assignment:
Read Week 5
Read Three Sisters.
WEEK VI. Uncle Vanya on screen. Discussion of scenes from different screen versions of Uncle Vanya.
Assignment:
Read The Cherry Orchard.
WEEK VII. Potential of the group. Words, Deeds, and Predisposition of Characterstc "Words, Deeds, and Predisposition of Characters"
in Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
Assignment:
Read Week 7
WEEK VIII. The Cherry Orchard on stage and screen. Stanislavsky’s struggle with The Cherry Orchard. Screening and discussion of The Cherry Orchard.
WEEK IX. The role of mythological allusions. The space of action and the implied space in literature and life. Mythological context in Ariadne.
The implied space in The Seagull and Uncle Vanya.
Assignment:
Read Week 9
WEEK X. The integration of several mythological paradigms in the implied space. Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
Chekhov’s four major plays as a cycle.
Assignment:
Read Week 10
WEEK XI. Viewing and discussion of Four Funny Families.
WEEK XII. STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS
THE READING LIST:
PLAYS
The Seagull
Uncle Vanya
Three Sisters
Cherry Orchard
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These are available at:
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/chekhov/anton/c51se/index.html
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/chekhov/anton/c51un/index.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/sisters.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/chorch.htm
Short Stories
In the Graveyard
The Grasshopper
The Steppe
Ariadne
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These are available at:
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Aria.shtml
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Gras.shtml
http://www.readprint.com/work-339/Anton-Chekhov
http://www.readprint.com/work-210/Anton-Chekhov
CRITICAL WORKS:
Aristotle, Poetics. Indianapolis:Hackett, 1987.
Chekhov Then and Now: the Reception of Chekhov in World Culture. New York, 1997.
De Sherbinin, Julie W., Chekhov and Russian religious culture : the poetics of the Marian paradigm. Northwestern University Press, 1997
Elen Chances, "Chekhov's Seagull: Ethereal Creature or Stuffed Bird?" in Chekhov's Art of Writing. A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Thomas Eekman (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1977), 27-34.
Gottlieb, Vera. Chekhov and the Vaudeville: A Study of Chekhov's One-Act Plays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Gromov, M. P., Chekhov, 1993
Rayfield, Donald. “The Cherry Orchard”: Catastrophe and Comedy. New York: Twayne, 1994.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, 1957
Kirjanov, Daria A. Chekhov and the poetics of memory. P. Lang, 2000
Senderovich, Savely. “The Cherry Orchard”: Chekhov’s Last Testament.” 35 Russian Literature (North-Holland, 1994): 223-42.
Shklovsky, Victor. Theory of Prose. Dalkey Archive P. 1990.
Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. Vol.7. New Haven:Yale UP, 1961.
Turner, C.J.G. Time and Temporal Structure in Chekhov. Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, #22, 1994.
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These are available at Van Pelt.