Gogol's Crime and Punishment : An essay in the interpretation of Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls (Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History)

Heftrich, Urs/ Swann, Joseph (TRN)

Academic Studies Press（2022/02発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 294 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781644697627
• DDC分類 891.733

Full Description

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.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword

Introduction: Of Beauty, Truth, and Evil

Part One: Chichikov's Prehistory

 Ethos and Epic

 The Ground Plan of Dead Souls

 The Ground Plan of Dead Souls Revisited

Part Two: Chichikov's Crime

 On Truth and Lies in a Moral Sense

 The Five Faces of Lying

 In the Shadow Realm of Lies

Part Three: Chichikov's Punishment

 Judgment and Rumor

 The Five Acts of the Drama

 Ethos and Epic: Chichikov's Crime and Punishment

Illustrations

Bibliography

Index