Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
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
