#  English 90cb. Chekhov/Beckett 

 



 Instructor: [Elizabeth Phillips](/people/elizabeth-phillips)  
Thursdays, 9:45-11:45 am | Location: Barker 018  
[Website](https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/62769)

 *Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.*

 This seminar will put into conversation the radically influential literatures of Anton Chekhov and Samuel Beckett. Despite the chronological and geographical distance between their writing careers, Chekhov and Beckett describe human experience in remarkably similar ways, and drew upon many of the same philosophical influences. Their writings are attuned to many of the same concerns: human misery and nonsensical passions, the passage and felt experience of time, the ways in which the theater can create new sensations in its audiences. In studying Chekhov, we will discuss his depiction of Russian life as a method of confronting Realism and pioneering a new naturalism, and we will focus particularly on his experimentation at the Moscow Art Theater and collaboration with director Constantin Stanislavski, as well as his influence on the Russian Avant Garde. For Beckett, we will study his plays and novels as a response to the influence of Marcel Proust and James Joyce; we will discuss the Second World War and his work in the French Resistance; we will define Aburdism, Existentialism, and Postmodernism. In this small seminar, we will also echo Chekhov and Beckett’s same philosophical questions, and inquire into our own felt experiences of reading and watching: what does it mean to be bored? To experience illness? To establish a routine? To feel desperate? Through our readings in prose and drama, as well as several secondary essays, we will compose original, research-based arguments, culminating in a substantial paper or creative final project.