Diagnosing the Stalinist sickness. Images of illness in Aleksandr Bek and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Journal article

This article compares two novels first submitted for Soviet publication in the mid-1960s, but only published during glasnost: Aleksandr Bek’s New Appointment and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward. The latter, though, well known, has not been analysed in terms of its illness imagery; it has also never been compared with Bek’s less-studied but strikingly similar work, in terms of the illness imagery in the texts and in their reception by several generations of Soviet readers. The article uses medical humanities approaches to disease literature and conceptual metaphor theory to trace the complexity of both novels’ treatment of mental and physical illness. It argues that they compel us to reconsider cancer as a political metaphor, and Soviet illness rhetoric, suggesting that both can be used for more polyvalent and moderate critique than is usually assumed.

Authors: Jones, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
• Journal: Modern Language Review
• Volume: 111
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1085-1112
• Publication date: 2016-01-01
• Acceptance date: 2016-03-15
• DOI: 10.5699/modelangrevi.111.4.1085
• ISSN: 0026-7937