The doctor’s image in the reception of Russian criticism and literary studies in the 20th and 21st centuries

The article highlights the stages of literary and critical reception of the doctor’s image presented in Russian prose in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The work is novel in that it is the first to consider and systematize different points of view of critics and literary scholars on the nature of the doctor’s artistic image, on the doctor’s place in the cultural and historical space of Russia. The research aims to identify the key trends in the reception of the doctor’s image in Russian criticism and literary studies in the 20th and 21st centuries. As a result, it is found that while the thinkers of the 19th century highlight characterological features of a doctor character such as inner freedom, thirst for knowledge and empiricism of thinking inherent in the new generation, the critics and literary scholars of the early 20th century consider a doctor character in the context of the era of scientific discovery. During the period of totalitarianism, the hero is evaluated in terms of having “obligatory” qualities and his involvement with socialism and its achievements. Since the late 1980s, a doctor character has been analyzed from the position of his belonging to the intelligentsia, whose representatives are characterized by internal contradictions. The studies of the early 21st century attempt to reinterpret traditional renderings of Russian classical literature, outline new approaches to the analysis of a literary image: a doctor character is presented as a bearer of the highest spiritual value, a way to transmit hidden meanings.