Nikolai Gogol

Faith Wigzell (University College London)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.1.00: Slavic and Russian Writing and Culture: Old, Medieval and Tsarist, 700-1917.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

Born 1 Apr 1809
Died 4 Mar 1852
Activity 1829-1852

Places

Born in Ukraine
Active in Russia; Italy

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist
Story-writer

Resources

Gogol's Works

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Nikolai Gogol [Gogol’], a younger contemporary of Aleksandr Pushkin, was one of the most original and enigmatic of Russian writers. The author of short stories, plays and a novel, he has influenced Russian writers from Dostoevsky on, as well as eliciting varied interpretations. Modern readers, attracted to his complex prose style, bizarre humour and narrative playfulness see him as one of the most modern of classic Russian writers. With Gogol nothing is what it seems.

For a start, he was not Russian, but Ukrainian, born in 1809 into a family of petty nobility. His father’s family styled themselves Gogol-Ianovskii to imply noble Cossack descent, for which there is no evidence. From them he seems to have inherited his desire for prominence; from his father, a raconteur and amateur

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2203 words

Citation: Wigzell, Faith. "Nikolai Gogol". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 February 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1782, accessed 21 November 2024.]