Russia's Weird Classic: Nikolai Gogol

Preference to sophomores. The work and life of Nikolai Gogol, the eccentric founder of Fantastic Realism. The relationship between romanticism and realism in Russian literature, and between popular Ukranian culture and high Russian and W. European traditions in Gogol's oeuvre. The impact of his work on 20th-century modernist literature, music, and art, including Nabokov, literature of the absurd, Shostakovich, Meyerhold, and Chagall.