TRANSFORMATION OF THE ESTATE TEXT IN A.P. CHEKHOV’S PROSE (1887–1990)

Abstract

In this article the author analyzes functioning of the estate text peculiar to Russian literature, especially to A.P. Chekhov’s prose during the period of paradigmatic changes (1887) and mature works (the end of the 1880s – 1890s). For the last decades of the XIXth century, the estate discourse undergoes great changes in socio-historic, cultural and literature aspects. Chekhov's literary works determines the direction of the studied literary phenomenon development in many respects. Deconstruction of the estate literary matrix has been observed on the basis of five works by A.P. Chekhov. In the stories «Verochka» and «In the Country House» the hero is being transformed: in the first story, instead of the ero-carrier of a certain life philosophy and ideology, the character of the «eighties» is embodied,he is oriented to the positivist world image and at the same time possesses a post-romantic «solitary consciousness»; in the second one the character of misanthrope with quasi-positive views is embodied in a satirical mode. In the stories «At Home» and «A Visit to Friends» mythologem of the estate text is destroyed. In this case the «House» aquires the meaning of a dull place. This development was extremely productive in the literature at the turn of the century and in the XXth century. Upon arrival at the steppe estate the heroine of the first story quickly loses her «humanity» and life goal aimed at self-development. The leading character of the second story had an «estate» experience gone a long time ago; the present in the estate seems vulgar to him. The last story «The New Villa» thematically completes the plot of the «turn» of epochs in its estate version. The story shows a change in interaction of social actors in the process of changing socio-historical formations. A Russian intellectual’s call for alleviation of the people’s fate causes peasants’ alienation and unjust malice. In the end, the athor concludes the significance of changes in the entire paradigm of the estate text in the A.P. Chekhov’s prose setting its further development in Russian literature.