Dew on the Grass: The Poetics of Inbetweenness in Chekhov

Acknowledging and examining the poetic properties of Anton Chekhov's (1860-1904) prose should not lead to resolving them on any deeper and semantically superior level than the events they describe, contends Lapushnin (Russian literature, U. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill). He argues that assigning such properties to a symbolic or mythopoetic level contradicts the Russian writer's dynamic vacillation between such textual poles as semantic, thematic, and metaphysical--a fundamental trait he calls inbetweenness. He covers the concept of inbetweenness and the poetry of Checkov's prose, the immediate textual context, the context of the entire work, and his spatial rhymes. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Radislav Lapushin is Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications on Chekhov, both in Russian and English, and of several volumes of poetry.