A Comical Situation as a Dominant Principle of Chekhov''s Plot Structuring (by the example of stories "St Peter’s Day" and "The twenty-ninth of june")
In the present article the semantics of the term “story” is specified, some distinctive features of the given genre are explored. The author explains that an appeal to mentioned above form was regular dur ing the mid to late 19th century. That is when the mixture of tendencies due to including folklore, philosophy and other spheres of art to literary texts happened. That is how anti-genres, stylization and parodies appeared. Folklore joke stylization realized in the genre of the story is illustrated by the example of two early works of Chekhov “St Peter’s Day” (1881) and “The twenty-ninth of June” (1882). Chekhov’s interest to folklore and knowledge of folk calendar events, which are used to capture the atmosphere of the mid to late 19th century and also to create a comic effect, are reported. It is emphasized that the genre of the story is becoming all purpose denomination which is able to hold a new content with an old form.