N. Gogol’s story “The Overcoat” in the receptive consciousness of the turn of the XX–XXI centuries. Article 2

The role and place of Gogol’s heritage in the literary process at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries are one of the pressing issues in modern Gogol studies. The works of modern authors are introduced into the scientific field, which make it possible to identify the mechanisms of dialogue, appropriation and development of the Gogol tradition. And this determines the research interest in this issue. The purpose of the study is to identify and consider the semantics and function of the image of a little man, genetically dating back to the image of Gogol’s Bashmachkin, and the accompanying plot elements in the works of writers at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. The novelty of the research is ensured, firstly, by the analysis of artistic material that has not previously been introduced into scientific circulation, and secondly, the semantics and function of the “overcoat text” in the artistic structure of specific works of the literary era of the 20th–21st centuries are revealed. The works of modern authors were used as material: the stories by E. Chizhova “Nyutochkin’s House” (2008) and E. Dolgopiat “The Victim” (2015), M. Bogayev’s play “Bashmachkin” (2003). The selected works belong to different aesthetic and genre forms and the point of convergence between them is their dialogical reinterpretation of the narrative elements of the story’s artistic system based on mystical and religious traditions. The works actualize interest in Gogol’s narrative principles of the novel, built on the harmonious “translation” of the ethical (the value system of religious-teacher culture) into the aesthetic. In E. Chizhova’s story “Nyutochkin’s House” the novella “The overcoat” is understood as a metaphor for the St. Petersburg text. The plot of the protagonist in its semantic two-layeredness, socio-historical and biblical-mythological, appears as an eternal St. Petersburg plot, which is a part of the general mythological semiosphere of the St. Petersburg text. In O. Bogayev’s play, the reception of the fantastic finale of the novel “The overcoat” is rewritten using elements of the poetics of the theater of the absurd and it is focused on the problem of the moral choice of the hero, who assumes the role of the initiator of the Last Judgment. In the story by E. Dolgopyat, the reception of the plot episodes of the story “meeting with a significant person” and “punitive fantastic ending” actualizes and transforms the understanding of the theme of the social world and the social individual, which do not correspond to the ethical ideal.

N. V. Gogol, “Overcoat”, E. Chizhova, “Nyutochkin House”, E. Dolgopyat, “Victim”, “Bashmachkin”