Anton Chekhov's The Black Monk: An Example of the Fantastic?

This article assesses how legitimately Chekhov's story The Black Monk can be considered to exemplify the fantastic. Through a close reading of key passages, it argues that Chekhov deftly employs verbal and syntactic techniques to provoke the interpretative hesitation which is the genre's hallmark. In the process, it highlights similarities in practice between The Black Monk and other exponents of the fantastic, particularly Vladimir Odoevskii in The Sylph. Whilst acknowledging the impact of the protagonist's posited madness upon the story's classification, the author argues that, in the omnipresent ambiguity and instability of the fictional world, The Black Monk reaches beyond conventional practice of the fantastic to point the way forward to future development.