| Summary: | International audience Despite the nearly one hundred years and the thousands of kilometers separating them, Anton Chekhov and Jacques Ferron share a similar sensitivity tinged by their experience as doctors. They both enjoyed privileged access to people’s intimate health concerns, but also gained insights into their desolation and misery. In 1890, Chekhov set out for Sakhalin Island where he witnessed the great sufferings of the prisoners and general population. This trip confirmed his doubts about the sufficiency of medicine in the treatment of physical and mental illnesses. Ferron also saw poverty and sickness when practising medicine in Gaspésie and in the poor districts of Montréal as well as when working in the psychiatric institutions of Mont-Providence and, later, Saint-Jean-de-Dieu. Each author’s close contact with mentally ill patients finds an echo in some of their literary works. Chekhov’s and Ferron’s reflections on mental illness are coupled with the creative process, the main tool of the writer, but also a manner of apprehending the world. For both authors, conventional medical discourse does a poor job defining the fragile line that separates madness from originality (and even genius). In their writing each author explores, on the one hand, the pathologization of social interactions, which destroys the individual and its particularity, and on the other hand, the isolation of those classified as insane. In a society where the line is blurred between fantasizing and insanity, the attraction toward conformism endangers an effervescent creativity. Chekhov and Ferron addressed a modern type of madness, taking place in a world where scientific reason defines the limits of a dubious normality. In my paper, I will look at the place given to madness in The Wild Roses by Ferron and Chekov’s post-Sakhalin stories « Ward No. 6 » and « The Black Monk » to better understand its relation with the creative imagination of the individual. Malgré les près de cent ans et les milliers de kilomètres qui les ...
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