Essays on Gogol
Logos and the Russian Word
Publication Year: 2011
Published by: Northwestern University Press
Contents
Acknowledgments
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pp. ix- x
THIS VOLUME collects the papers presented at "The Logos of Gogol: Poetics, Aesthetics, Metaphysics," a conference we organized that took place at Wesleyan University on 9-10 April 1988. A great many people contributed to that splendid event whom it is our pleasure...
A Key to Titles of Gogol's Works
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pp. xi-xiii
Introduction
1. The Face of Recent Gogol Scholarship
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pp. 1-4
IN HIS valuable 1974 essay on the history of Gogol criticism, Robert A. Maguire described a situation that has since changed in at least two respects. First, Maguire noted that "the distinguishing mark of criticism...
2. The Logos of Gogol
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pp. 5-7
Scholars have taken both points of view-yes, GogoI's work is a lot of nonsense! some insist, while others have looked for what there might be in all this. The strange difficulties presented by GogoI's texts call into...
Works Cited in Introduction
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pp. 8-13
Being Buried Alive; or, Gogol in 1973
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pp. 14-18
IT WAS THE 31st of December; the train was to arrive at 11 :20; forty minutes to make it to the holiday table. An hour before arrival the intercom came on. Shulzhenko sang, then someone else. Then one number came after another with no announcements in...
Around "The Nose"
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pp. 19-39
THESE REMARKS are a continuation of my attempt to connect the famous enigma of "The Nose" with Gogol's philosophy of humanity, an attempt begun in my article...
The "Thing-in-Itself' in Gogol's Aesthetics: A Reading of the Dikanka Stories
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pp. 40-62
THE SENTENCES concluding the two volumes of GogoI's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, used as an epigraph to this essay, mark the emergence of a unique voice in world literature. The wild register of its obsessions...
False Pretenders and the Spiritual City: "A May Night" and "The Overcoat"
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pp. 63-74
"ALLOW HIM at least a drop of intelligence," says the actor Shchepkin apropos the author of the play in "The Denouement of The Inspector General...
Gogol's Poetics of Petrification
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pp. 75-88
Gogol's symbolic system of petrification and loss of speech, which may appear to be a limited aspect of his art, in fact leads us to the fundamental characteristics of his poetics. In a certain sense this...
Khlestakov as Representative of Petersburg in The Inspector General
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pp. 89-104
HOW DO WE "laugh at ourselves" when we experience GogoI's Inspector General? In the commentary on the play that he wrote soon after its first performance in...
Gogol's "The Portrait": The Simultaneity of Madness, Naturalism, and the Supernatural
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pp. 105-111
IN "LE DANTYU as a Beacon," the artist-typographer Ilia Zdanevich's fifth drama (or dra, as he called his productions), published in Paris and dated 1923, two of the main characters are painters. The hero...
The Landscape of Arabesques
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pp. 112-125
IN GOGOL'S 1835 collection Arabesques, landscape is destiny. According to GogoI's historical scheme, the character of a people is deeply affected by the geography of its homeland, and even forms of government are dictated by the lay of the land. The preoccupation...
The Bird Troika and the Chariot of the Soul: Plato and Gogol
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pp. 126-142
THE PROBLEM of Platonism in Gogol's work has long attracted the attention of critics. The first to discuss it were, in the beginning of the century, Innokentii Annenskii and S. K. Shambinago; later...
Artificiality and Nature in Gogol'sDead Souls
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pp. 143-157
THE COURSE this paper will follow should be clear from its title. It will point out an opposition in the text of Gogol's Dead Souls, demonstrate that certain moments in the text are actually elaborations of this opposition, and lastly show how the author ultimately reconciles...
The Death of Gogolian Polyphony: Selected Comments on Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends
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pp. 158-171
IN 1842 GOGOL' S Dead Souls left off with the portentous question, Whither Rus'? After five years of failing to offer a suitably monumental answer, presumably the next two canticles of a Russian...
Rereading Gogol's Miswritten Book: Notes on Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends
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pp. 172-184
AS MY BLOOMIAN title implies territoriality, it must be acknowledged from the start that a number of maps have been charted for GogoI's "artistic space" in general and for Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends in particular...
Distended Discourse: Gogol, Jean Paul, and the Poetics of Elaboration
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pp. 185-199
TO GET TO the point: Gogolloves to elaborate. He seems unwilling to introduce even the most peripheral character without expatiating at length on his trousers, the material from which they were made, where...
Gogol's Parables of Explanation: Nonsense and Prosaics
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pp. 200-239
IN HIS classic study The Russian Idea, Nicholas Berdiaev wrote: "What will interest me in the following pages is not so much the question: what has Russia been from the empirical point of view, as the question: what was the thought of the Creator about Russia, and my concern...
Notes on the Contributors
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pp. 240-242
Notes
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pp. 243-284
Index
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pp. 285-291
E-ISBN-13: 9780810165946
Print-ISBN-13: 9780810111912
Page Count: 292
Publication Year: 2011
Series Title: Studies in Russian Literature and Theory
Series Editor Byline: Saul Morson
