The Inverted World of Mentally Ill Patients Depicted by Russian and Chinese Doctor-Writers (Based on the Works of A. P. Chekhov and Lu Xin)

Abstract

Aim. To compare artistic means of depicting mentally ill characters in the works of the Russian writer A. P. Chekhov and the Chinese writer Lu Xin to identify the typology of the image of the distorted world of a sick consciousness.
Methodology. The paper examines artistic techniques in the texts of doctor-writers. The world of mentally ill patients is considered an important topic in the work of doctor-writers. The role of the experience of a professional doctor in creating images of mentally ill heroes is analyzed. For this purpose, methods of generalization and search for intertextual links with works of Russian and Chinese literature are used.
Results. In the texts of these authors, insanity is considered a type of mental illness that is incompatible with life in society, in addition, it manifests itself as a “persecution mania”, that is, the patient is scared, agitated and anxious, he is always on guard. The author concludes that professional doctors describe madness from the viewpoint of their unique medical experience, but for humanist writers, crazy people turn out to be reasonable and honest people in an “inverted world” in which good and evil, reason and madness have reversed places.
Research implications. The discovered data make it possible to expand the intertextual field of the work by including some medical topics that were not considered by previous researchers.