Like steam, life can be compressed into a narrow little container, but, also like steam, it will endure pressure only to a certain point. And in Three Sisters, this pressure is brought to the limit, beyond which it will explode—and… Read More ›
Search results for ‘Anton Chekhov’
Analysis of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard
It is, as a rule, when a critic does not wish to commit himself or to trouble himself, that he refers to atmosphere. And, given time, something might be said in greater detail of the causes which produced this atmosphere—the… Read More ›
Analysis of Anton Chekhov’s Stories
In his lifetime, Anton Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) gained considerable critical acclaim. In 1888, he won the Pushkin Prize for his fiction, and in 1900, he was selected to honorary membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences for both… Read More ›
Analysis of Anton Chekhov’s Plays
Anton Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904 was talking about other writers when he said, “The best of them are realists and depict life as it is, but because every line they write is permeated, as with a juice, by… Read More ›
Analysis of Amos Oz’s Black Box
Written by Israeli writer Amos Oz (1939–2018), Black Box appeared in Hebrew under the title Kufsah Shehorah in 1987. The novel immediately climbed to the top of the best-seller lists in Israel, breaking previously recorded book sales. It was translated… Read More ›
Analysis of Amy Hempel’s In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried
“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” initially appeared in Amy Hempel’s first collection of short stories titled Reasons to Live (1985), a group of stories that address various scenarios of coping, with this story, according to Hempel, providing… Read More ›
Analysis of Joy Williams’s Health
An anonymous Boston Globe reviewer once described Joy Williams as “Annie Dillard bumping into Cotton Mather.” She is also routinely compared with such contemporary writers as Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, as well as the film… Read More ›
Analysis of Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss
The first important collection of Katherine Mansfield’s work and a touchstone for the modernist short story. Bliss brought together stories composed from 1916 to 1919; at this time, Mansfield was living through the last years of the World War I… Read More ›
The Provincetown Players
The Provincetown Players was one of the most influential of the small, subscription theater groups that sprang up across America during the first two decades of the 20th century (see Little Theater Movement). Founded in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and later transplanted… Read More ›
Analysis of Peter Taylor’s A Spinster’s Tale
In terms of both his life and his work, Peter Taylor (1917–1994) proves a good representative of the literary generation that provided a transition between the southern renaissance and the post–southern renaissance period. Born into an extended political clan with… Read More ›
Off-Broadway Theater
Off-Broadway developed as an alternative to Broadway, one that would free the creative possibilities of the stage from commercialism. It came into its own in the 1960s and 1970s, with important productions and serious attention from drama critics and the… Read More ›
Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s Stories
Vladimir Nabokov’s (born April 22, 1899 — July 2, 1977) early stories are set in the post-czarist, post-World War I era, with Germany the usual location, and sensitive, exiled Russian men the usual protagonists. Many are nascent artists: wistful, sorrowful,… Read More ›
Analysis of Frank O’Connor’s Stories
Although widely read in Western literature, Frank O’Connor’s (17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) literary character is most profoundly influenced by tensions within the literature and life of Ireland, ancient and modern. He was a dedicated student of the… Read More ›
Analysis of Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths
The Lower Depths . . . is a remarkable play for a relatively inexperienced dramatist. It entertained but confronted, challenged and divided the auditorium. The Moscow Arts Theatre and arguably Russian theater were never to be the same again. —Cynthia… Read More ›
Analysis of Gao Xingjian’s The Other Shore
Gao Xingjian’s plays are characterized by originality, in no way diminished by the fact that he has been influenced both by modern Western and traditional Chinese currents. His greatness as a dramatist lies in the manner in which he has… Read More ›
Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
It is the peculiar richness of a play like Waiting for Godot that it opens vistas on so many different perspectives. It is open to philosophical, religious, and psychological interpretations, yet above all it is a poem on time, evanescence,… Read More ›
Analysis of William Saroyan’s Stories
Although William Saroyan (August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) cultivated his prose to evoke the effect of a “tradition of carelessness,” of effortless and sometimes apparently formless ruminations and evocations, he was in reality an accomplished and conscious stylist… Read More ›
Analysis of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck
The story of a simple soldier who murders his girl in a fit of jealous rage becomes the theme of a tragedy which Büchner wrote during the last months of his life. The play comes to us a fragment without… Read More ›
Analysis of Tobias Wolff’s Stories
Tobias Wolff (born June 19, 1945) is an outstanding contemporary craftsman of the American short story. Working slowly, sometimes taking months and countless drafts, he polishes each story into an entertaining, gemlike work that reads with deceptive ease. He has… Read More ›
Analysis of W. Somerset Maugham’s Stories
W. Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) first claimed fame as a playwright and novelist, but he became best known in the 1920’s and 1930’s the world over as an international traveler and short-story writer. Appearing in… Read More ›
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