Chekov essay in on time

It begins ...

This essays discusses Anton Chekhov’s story ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ published in Russian in 1899 and in English three years later. The essay makes the case that this deceptively simple story (which Nabokov described as “one of the greatest stories ever written” ) illustrates the mould-breaking innovations in approach, structure, style and technique which Chekhov introduced to the short story form. It demonstrates Chekhov’s position as what one might call a late-19th Century, proto-Modernist. His short stories establish a literary bridge between Victorian-era fiction – heavily laden with deterministic plot, character detail, classically antagonistic relationships and a recurring tendency towards formal narrative closure or resolution – and a more open, ambiguous and multidimensional portrayal of the human condition within realistic settings, with recognisably realistic characters and narrative structures that resist movement inexorably towards seemingly ineluctable conclusions or resolution.

And ends some two thousand or so words later. We shall see.