Publisher's Synopsis
Chekhov in XXI century: the Positional Style and the Comedy of a New Type. Vera Zubareva attempts here a very ambitious thing, nothing less than a poetics of dramatic character as an alternative to the familiar, Aristotelian plot-based approach. She brings to her task a sophisticated understanding of human systems - organic, intelligent, capable of learning - and of their ability to interact creatively as psychological mechanisms in the best sense of the word: that is, as mechanisms for generating potentials. Chekhov, especially, will not quite sound the same. Caryl Emerson, professor of Russian literature and comparative literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. Princeton University
