Exploring Gogol / / Robert A. Maguire

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910154724503321
• Autore: Maguire Robert A.
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Stanford, CA : , : Stanford University Press, , [2020]; ©1994
• ISBN: 0-8047-6532-4
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xxii, 409)
• Collana: Studies of the Harriman Institute
• Disciplina: 891.7/3/3
• Soggetti: LITERARY CRITICISM / Russian & Former Soviet Union
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (pages [377]-390) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Three Notes to the Reader -- Major Events in Gogol's Life -- Works by Gogol Cited in the Text and Notes -- 1. Bounded Space -- 2. Displacement: "Old-World Landowners -- 3. Equilibrium as Place: "The Two Ivans" -- 4. Place Within: "Diary of a Madman -- 5. Place as Nature -- 6. Some Sources of Place -- 7. The Art of Seeing -- 8. Rome -- 9. Imitation: "The Portrait" -- 10. An Anxious Eye -- 11. From Eye to Word -- 12. The Word in Dead Souls -- 13. The Retrieval of the Past -- 14. Word Wielders -- 15. The Search for a Language of Self -- 16. The Failure of the Word -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: For the past 150 years, critics have referred to 'the Gogol problem', by which they mean their inability to account for a life and work that are puzzling, often opaque, yet have proved consistently fascinating to generations of readers. This book proceeds on the assumption that Gogol's life and work, in all their manifestations, form a whole; it identifies, in ways that have eluded critics to date, the rhetorical strategies and thematic patterns that create the unity. These larger concerns emerge from a close study of the major texts, fictional and nonfictional, and in turn are set in a broad artistic and intellectual context, Russian and European, with special attention to German philosophy, the visual arts, and Orthodox Christian theology.