concept
Fish-as-Social-Type Allegory
fish allegory
The organizing device of "A Fishy Business": each species of fish caught near Moscow is mapped onto a recognizable contemporary social or professional type (bureaucrat, intelligentsia liberal, petty clerk, merchant, and so on), turning an ostensible angling manual into a satirical bestiary of Moscow society.
Reading notes
- A Fishy Business §14 the following breeds of fish
From here the treatise abandons fishing instruction entirely and becomes a bestiary of Moscow social and professional types, each fish species standing for a recognizable figure of the day -- a device Chekhov also used elsewhere (e.g. the zoological satires of his early journalism).
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