We created this site as a vehicle to explore five of our favorite Chekhov short stories: “The Death of a Clerk”, “The Huntsman”, “The Student”, “The Man in a Case”, and “Gooseberries”. In lieu of a series of exhausting and non-exhaustive analytical essays on each of the stories, we opted to construct broader analyses composed of several short yet insightful comments on each of the story pages. This form better enables hyperlinking and also feels much more appropriate for the blog scaffolding that WordPress provides. We read the Volokhonsky and Pevear translations (Modern Library, 2000), as well as selected criticism available at the Davis Library of Middlebury College.
Otherwise, we are grateful to antonchekhov.org for publishing an online library of Chekhov’s English translations (and audiorecodings of said translations)–links to each of the five aforementioned short stories are available on this site.
Finally, film adaptation of these stories (which was presented to our Golden Age of Russian Literature class, taught by Professor Tom Beyer) is available here.
If we piqued your interest, come check out our class production of The Cherry Orchard at 1330 on Tuesday, May 5th, 2015, in the Middlebury College Abernethy Room. Thanks for visiting!
~Cordelia, August, and Jake