Tues
day, February 25, 2014
195 College Avenue
Potluck - 6:00pm
Colloquium - 7:00pm
Matthew Mangold, Ph.D. Graduate Student
Comparative Literature
Rutgers University
"WRITING WITH PATIENTS
Medical Insight and Comic Form in Chekhov’s Early Writing
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was training to be a doctor when his first stories appeared in St. Petersburg humor magazines. Looking closely at illness histories and autopsy reports Chekhov wrote during his medical training, Matthew compares these to stories the writer published in humor journals during the same period. Medicine drew Chekhov's attention to the spaces of the body and the effects of environmental conditions on the mind. Matthew shows how the writer aligns these concentrations with efforts to master irony and the grotesque in his early comic works.g"
