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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A paper which looks at Gogol's Mirgorod stories in comparison to Dead Souls and The Government Inspector, with regard to the diversity of themes and forms which they demonstrate. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: JL5_JLgogol.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Souls, this is not necessarily a fault; they perhaps illustrate not only the way in which Gogols personal perspectives and literary skills developed, but also the broad spectrum of content
and form which his work demonstrates. As Dostoyevsky (1964) quotes him as saying: "I am destined by the mysterious powers to walk hand in hand
with my strange heroes, viewing life in all its immensity as it rushes past me, viewing it through laughter seen by the world and tears unseen and unknown by it"
(Dostoyevsky, 1964, Crime and Punishment). The tales themselves show considerable diversity: we have a rural idyll in Old-World Landowners, social satire in the tale of the two Ivans, militarism and
romance in Taras Bulba and the supernatural in Viy. There are similarities, it is true, in the sense that each story
describes the disruption which occurs when an alien presence of some kind invades the settled existence of a group of characters, but there is also considerable thematic variety. In the
tale of the two Ivans, it is the female influence which upsets the relationship between the two men; as the narrator comments, "I must confess that I do not understand
why things are so arranged, that women should seize us by the nose as deftly as they do the handle of a teapot" (How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, 1952, p
206) referring to Agafya Fedosyevna who is, as he points out, not even a relative of Ivan Nikiforovitch. In The Nose, of course,
the entire concept takes on a surreal turn, as Prascovia Osipovna shrieks that Ivan the barber has been pulling his customers "by the nose" while he shaves them, and has
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