Nos, Nikolai Gogol - Ann Shukman (essay date 1989)
Ann Shukman (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: Shukman, Ann. “Gogol's ‘The Nose’ or the Devil in the Works.” In Nikolay Gogol: Text and Context, edited by Jane Grayson and Faith Wigzell, pp. 64–82. London: Macmillan, 1989.
[In the following essay, Shukman asserts that a valid interpretation of “The Nose” must take into account that which is excluded from the narrative through various omissions, digressions, and ellipses.]
If ‘The Nose’ had been written in French or English, or if, on the other hand, post-structuralism had taken root in Moscow and Leningrad, Gogol's tale might well have become a proof text for deconstructive exegesis. Constructed on a pun, replete with paradoxes, illogicalities, games and mystifications with the reader, the tale is ‘unreadable’ in the sense that it resists any single definitive reading or ‘univocal’ meaning; and indeed, to use deconstructionist terms, it might be argued that it contains...
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