Through careful textual readings of Gogol's most famous works, Karlinsky argues that Gogol's homosexual orientation-which Gogol himself could not accept or forgive in himself-may provide the missing key to the riddle of Gogol's personality. "A brilliant new biography that will long be prized for its illuminating psychological insights into Gogol's actions, its informative readings of his fiction and drama, and its own stylistic grace and vivacity."-Edmund White, Washington Post Book World
Collected here are Gogol’s finest tales—stories that combine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant with the sardonic social criticism of the city dweller—allowing readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostoevsky and Kafka. All of Gogol’s most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know. The wholly unique blend of the mundane and the supernatural that Gogol crafted established his reputation as one of the most daring and inventive writers of his time. From the acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, a brilliant translation of Nikolai Gogol’s short fiction.
This innovative study of one of the most important writers of Russian Golden Age literature argues that Gogol adopted a deliberate hybrid identity to mimic and mock the pretensions of the dominant culture.
Nikolai Gogol, Russia's greatest comic writer, is a literary enigma. His masterworks--"The Nose," "The Overcoat," "The Inspector General," "Dead Souls"--have attracted contradictory labels over the years, even as the originality of his achievement continues to defy exact explanation. Donald Fanger's superb new book begins by considering why this should be so, and goes onto survey what Gogol created, step by step: an extraordinary body of writing, a model for the writer in Russian society, a textual identity that eclipses his scanty biography, and a kind of fiction unique in its time. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, as well as on everything Gogol wrote, including journal articles, letters, drafts, and variants, Fanger explains Gogol's eccentric genius and makes clear how it opened the way to the great age of Russian fiction. The method is an innovative mixture of literary history and literary sociology with textual criticism and structural interrogation. What emerges is not only a framework for understanding Gogol's writing as a whole, but fresh and original interpretation of individual works. A concluding section, "The Surviving Presence," probes the fundamental nature of Gogol's creation to explain its astonishing vitality. In the process a major contribution is made to our understanding of comedy, irony, and satire, and ultimately to the theory of fiction itself.
This book is a study devoted to exploring the use of a Russian version of the Jewish stereotype (the ridiculous Jew) in the works of three of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Rosenshield does not attempt to expose the stereotype—which was self-consciously and unashamedly employed. Rather, he examines how stereotypes are used to further the very different artistic, cultural, and ideological agendas of each writer. What distinguishes this book from others is that it explores the problems that arise when an ethnic stereotype is so fully incorporated into a work of art that it takes on a life of its own, often undermining the intentions of its author as well as many of the defining elements of the stereotype itself. With each these writers, the Jewish stereotype precipitates a literary transformation, taking their work into an uncomfortable space for the author and a challenging one for readers.
This monograph is nothing less than a bold attempt at solving the riddle of Gogol’s novel Dead Souls that even inspired a staging of Dead Souls at Schauspiel Stuttgart. Heftrich gives a comprehensive, coherent answer to the question of the novel’s meaning by meticulously laying bare its structure. The first part of the monograph is dedicated to one section of Gogol’s novel that has been neglected by virtually all critics - a clue that leads to a strictly ethical reading of Gogol’s epic. Gogol, as it emerges, constructed Dead Souls strictly according to a moral pattern. It is amazing to discover how flawlessly Dead Souls is built in this regard. The novel thus proves to be a true descendant of medieval romance with its inseparable interrelation between ethics and epics.
These fourteen essays reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary character of Russian literature research in general and of the study of Gogol in particular, focusing on specific works, Gogol's own character, and the various approaches to aesthetic, religious, and philosophical issues raised by his writing.
This literary guide leads students with advanced knowledge of Russian as well as experienced scholars through the text of Nikolai Gogol’s absurdist masterpiece “The Nose.” Part I focuses on numerous instances of the writer’s wordplay, which is meant to surprise and delight the reader, but which often is lost in English translations. It traces Gogol’s descriptions of everyday life in St. Petersburg, familiar to the writer’s contemporaries and fellow citizens but hidden from the modern Western reader. Part II presents an overview of major critical interpretations of the story in Gogol scholarship from the time of its publication to the present, as well as its connections to the works of Shostakovich, Kafka, Dalí, and Kharms.
By Authors Possessed examines the development of the demonic in key Russian novels from the last two centuries. Defining the demonic novel as one that takes as its theme an evil presence incarnated in the protagonists and attributed to the Judeo-Christian Devil, Adam Weiner investigates the way the content of such a book can compromise the moral integrity of its narration and its sense of authorship. Weiner contends that the theme of demonism increasingly infects the narrative point of view from Gogol's Dead Souls to Dostoevsky's The Devils and Bely's Petersburg, until Nabokov exorcised the demonic novel through his fiction and his criticism. Starting from the premise that artistic creation has always been enshrouded in a haze of moral dilemma and religious doubt, Weiner's study of the demonic novel is an attempt to illuminate the potential ethical perils and aesthetic gains of great art.
