Chekhov and time recaptured

• Grant number: 17/04380-3
• Support type: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): January 05, 2018
• Effective date (End): July 04, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Languages
• Principal researcher: Bruno Barretto Gomide
• Grantee: Rodrigo Alves Do Nascimento
• Supervisor abroad: Galin Tihanov
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Queen Mary University of London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/21718-0 - Chekhov and the time recaptured, BP.DR

Abstract

This is an application project for a research scholarship at the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) from September 2017 to July 2018, under the supervision of Professor Galin Tihanov, one of the main contemporary slavists and a reference in Bakhtinian studies. The objective of the research is to define a consistent theoretical framework for the problem of time and of how it is structured in Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's dramas (1860-1904). Our basic assumption is that Chekhov adopted the form of traditional drama, which is based the portrayal of present conflicts trough dramatic action and clear dialogues. His characters however always escape the present and can hardly stand it. According to Bakhtin, such transformations could be considered part of the process of novelization of the dramatic form to which most dramas were subjected to in the late XIX century, since the novel is supposedly more open to the time of dreams, of history and of the subjectivity in crisis. Thus, the change in time (the first principle of the Bakhtinian chronotope) also expresses a new conception of men and society. Jean-Pierre Sarrazac sees the impulse that engenders this formal change as a crisis in the domestic experience itself in late XIX century, seeing that home gradually ceased to be integral and formative and becomes more problematic. Here the microcosm becomes a small-scale conflagration of the social macrocosm and of the Zeitgeist. Our hypothesis is that the dislocation and detachment of characters to their present and, by extension, to the present of the drama, is what updates the work in time, making Chekhov's plays potential interpreters of contemporaneity. To consolidate this hypothesis, we will make a close reading of The Seagull and Three Sisters and confront this issue with solutions given to them in different stagings. (AU)