Of the thirty volumes in the authoritative Academy edition of Chekhov's collected works, fully twelve are devoted to the writer's letters. This is the first book in English or Russian addressing this substantial-though until now neglected-epistolary corpus. The majority of the essays gathered here represent new contributions by the world's major Chekhov scholars, written especially for this volume, or classics of Russian criticism appearing in English for the first time. The introduction addresses the role of letters in Chekhov's life and characterizes the writer's key epistolary concerns. After a series of essays addressing publication history, translation, and problems of censorship, scholars analyze the letters' generic qualities that draw upon, variously, prose, poetry, and drama. Individual thematic studies focus on the letters as documents reflecting biographical, cultural, and philosophical issues. The book culminates in a collection of short, at times lyrical, essays by eminent scholars and writers addressing a particularly memorable Chekhov letter. Chekhov's Letters appeals to scholars, writers, and theater professionals, as well to a general audience.

Dostoevsky Beyond Dostoevsky is a collection of essays with a broad interdisciplinary focus. It includes contributions by leading Dostoevsky scholars, social scientists, scholars of religion and philosophy. The volume considers aesthetics, philosophy, theology, and science of the 19th century Russia and the West that might have informed Dostoevsky's thought and art. Issues such as evolutionary theory and literature, science and society, scientific and theological components of comparative intellectual history, and aesthetic debates of the nineteenth century Russia form the core of the intellectual framework of this book. Dostoevsky's oeuvre with its wide-ranging interests and engagement with philosophical, religious, political, economic, and scientific discourses of his time emerges as a particularly important case for the study of cross-fertilization among disciplines. The individual chapters explore Dostoevsky's real or imaginative dialogues with aesthetic, philosophic, and scientific thought of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, revealing Dostoevsky's forward looking thought, as it finds its echoes in modern literary theory, philosophy, theology and science.

Of the thirty volumes in the authoritative Academy edition of Chekhov's collected works, fully twelve are devoted to the writer's letters. This is the first book in English or Russian addressing this substantial-though until now neglected-epistolary corpus. The majority of the essays gathered here represent new contributions by the world's major Chekhov scholars, written especially for this volume, or classics of Russian criticism appearing in English for the first time. The introduction addresses the role of letters in Chekhov's life and characterizes the writer's key epistolary concerns. After a series of essays addressing publication history, translation, and problems of censorship, scholars analyze the letters' generic qualities that draw upon, variously, prose, poetry, and drama. Individual thematic studies focus on the letters as documents reflecting biographical, cultural, and philosophical issues. The book culminates in a collection of short, at times lyrical, essays by eminent scholars and writers addressing a particularly memorable Chekhov letter. Chekhov's Letters appeals to scholars, writers, and theater professionals, as well to a general audience.

Anton Chekhov is justly famous as an author and a playwright, with his work continuing to appear on stages around the world more than a century after his death. However, he is rarely studied for his intellectual and philosophical theories. His disinterest in developing a “unified idea�—in vogue for Russian intellectuals of his time—and his aversion to the maximalism characteristic of contemporary Russian culture and society set him apart from his fellow writers. As a result, Chekhov’s contribution to intellectual and philosophical discourse was obscured both by his contemporaries and by subsequent scholars.  Svetlana Evdokimova tackles this gap in Chekhov scholarship, examining the profound connections between his unstated philosophy and his artistic production. Arguing that Chekhov’s four major plays (The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, The Seagull, and Uncle Vanya) constitute a kind of cycle, Staging Existence offers a major reappraisal of this critical playwright in Russian intellectual history. Evdokimova’s deep, careful research into Chekhov’s engagement with contemporary philosophy provides insight into both Chekhov’s oeuvre and the writer himself.

Dostoevsky Beyond Dostoevsky is a collection of essays with a broad interdisciplinary focus. It includes contributions by leading Dostoevsky scholars, social scientists, scholars of religion and philosophy. The volume considers aesthetics, philosophy, theology, and science of the 19th century Russia and the West that might have informed Dostoevsky's thought and art. Issues such as evolutionary theory and literature, science and society, scientific and theological components of comparative intellectual history, and aesthetic debates of the nineteenth century Russia form the core of the intellectual framework of this book. Dostoevsky's oeuvre with its wide-ranging interests and engagement with philosophical, religious, political, economic, and scientific discourses of his time emerges as a particularly important case for the study of cross-fertilization among disciplines. The individual chapters explore Dostoevsky's real or imaginative dialogues with aesthetic, philosophic, and scientific thought of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, revealing Dostoevsky's forward looking thought, as it finds its echoes in modern literary theory, philosophy, theology and science.

This book explores the historical insights of Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), Russia's most celebrated poet and arguably its greatest thinker. Svetlana Evdokimova examines for the first time the full range of Pushkin's fictional and nonfictional writings on the subject of history-writings that have strongly influenced Russians' views of themselves and their past. Through new readings of his drama, Boris Godunov, such narrative poems as Poltava, The Bronze Horseman, and Count Nulin; prose fiction, including The Captain's Daughter and Blackamoor of Peter and the Great; lyrical poems; and a variety of nonfictional texts, the author presents Pushkin not only as a progenitor of Russian national mythology but also as an original historical and political thinker. Evdokimova considers Pushkin within the context of Romantic historiography and addresses the tension between Pushkin the historian and Pushkin the fiction writer. She also discusses Pushkin's ideas on the complex relations between chance and necessity in historical processes, on the particular significance of great individuals in Russian history, and on the historical truth.