Nikolai Gogol
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Major Issues Major IssuesLiterary historians have written extensively about Nikolai Gogol’s immense influence on 19th and 20th century Russian literature and look back to him as the literary forefather of major figures like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Nabokov. Gogol is credited with laying the groundwork for what would become the dominant mode of modern Russian fiction, realism. The early hallmarks of this genre have been identified in Gogol’s grim, gray settings, "dirty details," and antihero protagonists. Thematic critics of Gogol’s work have observed his preoccupation with evil, and his presentation of religion as art. Scholars have also devoted considerable attention to the poetic features of Gogol’s style, including word play, repetition of sounds, figures of speech, and rhythm. He is considered a comic writer, not because of his choice of subjects, but because of his choice and deployment of words. Gogol’s intrusive, self-conscious narrators have also greatly interested 20th century literary critics. Author LinksWelcome
to the World of Gogol
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