Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukraine and Russia

Nikolai Gogol is an author who had an enormous influence on Russian literature. What was the significance of the fact that an outstanding Russian writer was born and raised in Ukraine? How did Gogol's "outsider" status allow him to see in ordinary and boring Russian life a grotesque phantasmagoria, in which the humorous is inextricably linked to the sad and the terrible? Why did the critic Osip Senkovsky see Gogol's comedy The Inspector General as a "satire against Great Russian officials," and why did Count Fyodor Tolstoy, after reading Dead Souls, claim that Gogol was "an enemy of Russia [who] should be sent to Siberia in irons"? In this course we will attempt to answer these and similar questions. We will systematically examine a number of Nikolai Gogol's works and study Gogol's artistic strategy, his ideology, and the peculiarities of his unique poetics. Gogol's work will be examined in close connection with the social, cultural, and literary life of his time. We will also get acquainted with some important works of Russian critics, which have influenced not only the understanding of Gogol's work, but also the development of world literary theory ("How Gogol's Overcoat Was Made" by B. Eikhenbaum, etc.). Counts as a course in literature or culture and civilization.