“THE FAMILY THOUGHT” AND GENRE PECULIARITY OF THE NOVEL BY A.P. CHEKHOV “THREE YEARS”

Abstract

The article discusses the genre nature of the novel by A.P. Chekhov “Three Years” (1895) and confirms the idea of the decisive role of the “romance” beginning in its plot structure. The article presents an analysis of the poetics of the Chekhov story at various artistic levels: plot, compositional, figurative and symbolic. The proximity of this story to the novel is proved by the example of the following features: family conflict as one of the components of the social conflict, the image of a person’s inner world in complex relationships with the surrounding reality, the accuracy of the psychological picture, the ramified nature and complexity of the plot development, multi-problem and scale generalizations. As a comparative material, the analysis of the story involves Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”, which is usually interpreted by researchers as an example of a “novel” plot. Considered in line with this tradition, the story “Three Years” demonstrates the use of various techniques of novel poetics. Thus, the work outlines ways of creating an “open” ending, which is so characteristic of the novel genre, and the presence of a semantic “perspective” that significantly complicates the perception of the story.