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The Seagull | The Artistic Temperament of The Seagull

In this essay, the author examines Chekhov's play and his presentation of the artistic temperament.

In Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, M. H. Abrams characterizes a recurrent figure in romantic and modern literature—the suffering artist. He notes that the central character in many literary works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is ''the alienated and anguished artist whose priestly vocation entails the renunciation of this life and of this contemptible world in favor of that other world which is the work of his art.’’ In the nineteenth century, this figure first emerged in the romantic poetry of authors like Samuel...

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