Chekhov's Children and Discourse in the Comic Short Story

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Chekhov's Children and Discourse in the Comic Short Story University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-17-2013 "Little Things": Chekhov's Children and Discourse in the Comic Short Story Rich W. Goode IV The University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the Other English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Goode, Rich W. IV, ""Little Things": Chekhov's Children and Discourse in the Comic Short Story" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1630. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1630 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Little Things”: Chekhov’s Children and Discourse in the Comic Short Story A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English by Rich Goode B.A. University of New Orleans, 2010 May, 2013 © Rich Goode, 2013 ii For Chekhov: Thanks for all the laughs along the way. iii Acknowledgement I would like to thank the entire staff and faculty of the English department at the University of New Orleans. Whether in allowing me to test out and defend certain aspects of my present argument in conversation, in suggesting articles and other readings to help in both the expansion and narrowing of academic inquiry in this thesis, or in simply providing a workspace amid the peaceful ambiance of a lakeside breeze and the comfort of good books, I and this thesis owe much to the bright and caring people of UNO English. I extend especial gratitude to the members of my thesis committee, to whom I am deeply indebted. Readers Dr. Daniel Doll and Dr. Leslie White provided invaluable commentary and challenging questions to help in refining the focus of this thesis. And chair Dr. Nancy Easterlin remained indefatigably committed and attentive to this project since its inception in the summer of 2012, offering insight, advice, and encouragement until the very end. I would also like to thank my parents, Rick and Leslie Goode, my brothers, Chris and Philip, and my sister, Rachel, for their undying love and support, albeit perhaps at times with firmly arched eyebrows. Finally, many thanks to you, reader, for giving me but a little of your time. May you enjoy reading this at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it. iv Foreword This endeavor sprang from a love of the humorous in life, from an admiration of Anton Chekhov as a person and as a writer, and from an appreciation of the uniquely, sympathetically humorous in Chekhov’s personality and writings. In exploring his authorship, I noticed that Chekhov’s early, foundational fiction, though often unfairly dismissed by critics, displays many of the same comedic techniques for which his later, “mature” work is praised and emulated. I aimed to analyze a sampling of these earlier works and their comic elements in order to make a case for their inclusion in serious studies of the man and his work. In so doing, I found it necessary to explore the naturalistic foundations of comicality and narrative, to explain why certain words, phrases, or scenarios might be funny and worth hearing and repeating. While I hope to have given a full account of the necessity of humor studies’ adoption of a comprehensively naturalistic, and thus cognitive, approach, as well as its applicability to the literary arena, there is, of course, ever room for further research and expansion. As I finish writing this thesis in the spring of 2013, we are entering an exciting era of neuroscientific study, including most recently a presidential directive to map the human brain, similar to the DNA-mapping of the Human Genome Project of the 1990s; and I am confident that we will soon understand more about specific areas and processes of comic activation in the brain and, thereby, gain a more complete picture of the nature of mirth. In the meantime, I encourage literary scholars to test the theory presented in this paper against other famously funny writers and works, against the humorous tone in Chekhov’s later stories and his plays, against others of his early “little things.” As scholars, we should be open to using all available means at our disposal when analyzing the literary and determining its aesthetic value; an interdisciplinary, even empirical, vantage only offers more nuanced readings. Thus I have here applied the scientific method to Chekhov’s formative writings in order to achieve the most objective interpretation: presenting an hypothesis, formulating a method for testing the hypothesis, and subjecting the hypothesis to a counter-example observation that could potentially prove it false. I invite others to repeat this experiment of sorts and determine the validity of the theory and the approach, thereby testing its empirical verity. v Table of Contents List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................ vii Abstract ............................................................................................................................ viii Section I: Still Laughing After All this Time: A Brief History of Modern Humor Theory................................................................2 Section II: He Who Laughs Last Thinks Slowest: The Cognitive Basis of Humor ..................................................................................9 Section III: Have You Heard the One About…: The Roots of the Comic Short Story ........................................................................15 Section IV: The Sad Comicality of Life ............................................................................20 Section V: Funny Little Things..........................................................................................26 Section VI: Opposite Attraction: Incongruity and Culture Transmission, or Chekhov and Beyond...........................40 References ..........................................................................................................................47 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................48 Vita .....................................................................................................................................51 vi Illustrations The “philogenetic development of laughter and smiling” .................................................13 vii Abstract While most critics agree that Anton Chekhov is a funny writer and much critical commentary about his comedic techniques identifies how Chekhov is humorous, none examines why readers find him so. Using the tools of cognitive science, this paper explores the cognitive processes behind humor and narrative, as well as Chekhov’s exploitation of them for comical effect in his early short stories – namely the very concise and blatantly humorous “Kids,” “Grisha,” “Vanka,” and “At Home” – and uncovers, in these early writings, the origins of his celebrated and oft- imitated authorial legacy. Anton Chekhov; cognitive literary criticism; comedy; humor theory; short story theory viii “Of things Russian, I love now most of all the Russian childlike quality of . Chekhov. .” -Doctor Zhivago While most critics agree that Chekhov is a funny writer and much critical commentary about his comedic techniques identifies how Chekhov is humorous, none examines why readers find him so. Using the tools of cognitive science, I aim to explore the cognitive processes behind humor, as well as Chekhov’s exploitation of them for comical effect in his early short stories, and uncover, in these early writings, the origins of his celebrated authorial legacy. According to Matthew Hurley and his team of humor theorists, humor “must have been designed by evolution to perform some substantially important cognitive task, since it is ubiquitous in human beings, and its activity is powerfully rewarding” (62). Hurley’s recent work explains recognition of the comic as an important cognitive adaptation for checking individual and collective epistemic correctness. As Hurley asserts, our physiology rewards the successful discovery and abandonment of false belief with mirth, but only if the realization is relatively harmless and occurs too quickly for the misassumption to be consciously rejected. Thus the briefer a potential opportunity for comicality, the better the chances of the event’s actually being comical. The short story, then, appears to be an ideal medium for inducing humor. Moreover, short narratives and humor apparently foster sociality by their very natures, inspiring collective merriment in or judgment of the challenges facing isolated, usually marginal, figures (O’Connor). Both short stories and comicality exhibit prime methods for sharing knowledge about others and the physical environment, and when working
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