MEDICAL DISCOURSE IN A. P. CHEKHOV’S STORY «THE ENCOUNTER»

Abstract

The article deals with A. P. Chekhov’s development medical discourse and the experience of including it in a transformed form into the fabric of a single literary text. The  discursive practices in «The Encounter» story are conditioned by several factors. At the beginning of 1887, when the story was being written, Chekhov internally prepared himself for cooperation with authoritative, the so-called thick, literary-art journals, and carefully studied the works published in them. One of them was the essay by S. V. Maksimov «Two Prude Talkers», published in «Russkaja Mуsl`» (Russian Thought) journal and devoted to the analysis of the life of two real criminals. The epigraph to «The Encounter», taken from its text, serves as the proof of familiarity with the essay. In the same issue of the journal as Maksimov’s essay, an abstract of popular science article «Excursions into the Field of Psychiatry» by V. V. Lesevich was published, it was also taken into account by Chekhov while he created his story. Discursive practices embodied in these genres are to be reflected in Chekhov’s story. Equally important is the medical aspect of «The Encounter», stipulated by the events of early 1887. In January, Chekhov attended The Second Congress of Russian doctors. There he could hear the presentation of S. S. Korsakov, one of the founders of Russian psychiatry. Certain provisions of the scientist's works, published in 1887, are indirectly reflected in the analyzed story.
Biographical discourse also plays an essential role in it. It is connected with Chekhov's trip to see his brother Alexander in St. Petersburg during the typhus epidemic. The meeting of the Chekhov brothers is implicitly extrapolated to the encounter of the characters in the story. As a result «The Encounter» is not just another text in the writer's creative biography, but an example of his assimilation of diverse discourses. Heterogeneous discursive practices associated with the genres of an essay, a popular science article, a special medical publication, and an extraordinary biographical event in the space of the story were subjected to «removal», enriched its content, determined its internal enlargement.

Year
2022
Pages
312-326