![]() ![]() The plot of the novel relies on "dead souls" (i.e., "dead serfs") which are still accounted for in property registers. To count serfs (and people in general), the classifier " soul" was used: e.g., "six souls of serfs". Serfs were for most purposes considered the property of the landowner, who could buy, sell or mortgage them, as any other chattel. In the Russian Empire, before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners had the right to own serfs to farm their land. Poema", which contracted to merely "Dead Souls". The original title, as shown on the illustration (cover page), was "The Wanderings of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne's Sentimental Journey), it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form. Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death. Gogol himself saw his work as an " epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a " novel in verse". ![]() These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov (Russian: Павел Иванович Чичиков) and the people whom he encounters. ![]() Dead Souls ( Russian: «Мёртвые души» (pre-1918: Мертвыя души), Mjórtvyje dúshi) is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |