
"The Nose"
A Stylistic and Critical Companion to Nikolai Gogol's Story
Ksana Blank(Editor)
Academic Studies Press
Published on 20. April 2021
Book
Hardback
238 pages
978-1-64469-519-7 (ISBN)
Description
This literary guide leads students with advanced knowledge of Russian as well as experienced scholars through the text of Nikolai Gogol's absurdist masterpiece "The Nose". Part I focuses on numerous instances of the writer's wordplay, which is meant to surprise and delight the reader, but which often is lost in English translations. It traces Gogol's descriptions of St. Petersburg everyday life, familiar to the writer's contemporaries and fellow citizens but hidden from the modern Western reader. Part II presents an overview of major critical approaches to the story in Gogol scholarship.
Reviews / Votes
"Ksana Blank's companion to Gogol's 'The Nose' is an excellent new resource for students of Russian language and literature... The annotations to the text are remarkably thorough and identify allusions, irony, and colloquialisms that the casual reader may miss and the second-language student may struggle with even while paying great attention. These annotations are informed by a deep understanding of the historical and social context of the work; they not only identify interesting linguistic moments, but also point out ways in which the nineteenth-century Russian reader would have understood Gogol's text... 'The Nose': A Stylistic and Critical Companion is a helpful resource for students of Russian literature as well as for scholars new to Gogol criticism. Its attention to style and language is especially refreshing. It provides a much-needed close reading of the story that will hopefully inspire other, similarly detailed analyses of Gogol's works."- Sara Jo Powell, Harvard University, Russian Language Journal
"Ksana Blank's commentary to "The Nose" will be useful not only to advanced undergraduates and graduate students, but also to scholars, particularly to those who do not speak Russian natively. She has an admirable ability to reconstruct the context of Gogol's St. Petersburg, both in the everyday life of the capital and in the idioms that Gogol consciously fractures and rearranges."
- Michael Wachtel, Princeton University
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Brighton
United States
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
526 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64469-519-7 (9781644695197)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/2021
1st Edition
Academic Studies Press
€29.49
Available for download
Person
Ksana Blank is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. She is the author of Dostoevsky's Dialectics and the Problem of Sin (Northwestern University, 2010) and Spaces of Creativity: Essays on Russian Literature and the Arts (Academic Studies Press, 2016).
Content
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction
?. ?. ?????? <<???>>: The Text in Russian
ANNOTATIONS TO THE RUSSIAN TEXT
I
II
III
HOW "THE NOSE" IS MADE: Language-Game as the Engine of the Plot
INTERPRETATIONS
1. Joke, Jest, Farce, Anecdote
2. Social Satire
3. Mockery of the Demonic and of the Sacred
4. Chronicle of Folk Superstitions
5. A Case of Castration Anxiety
6. An Echo of German Romanticism
7. Perfect Nonsense 8. Shostakovich's Opera "The Nose"
8. Shostakovich's Opera "The Nose"
9. A Play with Reality: "The Nose," Kafka, and Dali
Instead of a Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
Introduction
?. ?. ?????? <<???>>: The Text in Russian
ANNOTATIONS TO THE RUSSIAN TEXT
I
II
III
HOW "THE NOSE" IS MADE: Language-Game as the Engine of the Plot
INTERPRETATIONS
1. Joke, Jest, Farce, Anecdote
2. Social Satire
3. Mockery of the Demonic and of the Sacred
4. Chronicle of Folk Superstitions
5. A Case of Castration Anxiety
6. An Echo of German Romanticism
7. Perfect Nonsense 8. Shostakovich's Opera "The Nose"
8. Shostakovich's Opera "The Nose"
9. A Play with Reality: "The Nose," Kafka, and Dali
Instead of a Conclusion
Selected Bibliography