Dead Souls (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Nikolai Gogol
- First Published: 1842
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire
- Subjects: Nineteenth century, Wills, Russia or Russian people, Feudalism, Swindling or swindlers, Taxation
- Locales: Russia
Dead Souls is one of literature’s greatest comic epics, planned as a secular companion to Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY and also as a parody of the picaresque novel, with Gogol’s hero ordinary and bland rather than racy and witty, and the book’s episodic events commonplace rather than hazardous. While the subtlety of Gogol’s humor invites comparison with Cervantes, his emphasis on provincial pettiness and paltriness, snobbery and stupidity parallels Jonathan Swift’s and Gustave Flaubert’s pessimistic views of human nature.
Chichikov is a pleasantly featureless hero,...
[The entire page is 590 words long]
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