About the author:
Anastasia A. Zhuravleva — PhD in Philology, Deputy Director for Scientific Work, The State Literary and Memorial Museum-Reserve of A.P. Chekhov “Melikhovo”, the village of Melikhovo, Chekhov city district, 142326 Moscow region, Russia.
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ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6337-6668
Abstract:
The article attempts to identify and describe one of the methods of the artistic embodiment of the Chekhov chronotope of the “large city” (according to the definition of I.N. Sukhikh), which replaced the “estate” and wider — epic, patriarchal-village chronotope of the Russian classics. Such a technique in Chekhov’s poetics is the introduction of common memories of heroes into the structure of works, rethinking their traditional functions and highlighting, sharpening the meaning of their characteristics such as cultural and psychological community. The commonality of memories is understood as the coincidence, identity, separability of the picture of the past by all participants of communication both at the level of factual events and at the level of value attitude to the subject of memory. Using the example of the writer’s works that differ in time of creation and genres, it is shown how the commonality of the heroes’ memories that arises or, conversely, does not arise becomes a marker of a psychological contact that has taken place or has not taken place, a sign of the changed structure of the world, the core of which for Chekhov, unlike I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, etc. classical writers, is the “large city” with its psychological heterogeneity and open-mindedness. The estate is depicted by Chekhov through the prism of a new dominant chronotope: the “estate chronotope” is replaced by the chronotope of the “large city”.