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Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, the eighth in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, two revolutionary works of the modern theater, whose realism, I argue, assembles the properties of social drama only to clear them away in preparation for the void of modernism. The first 10 minutes are free. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall: