About the author:
Ekaterina G. Paderina, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
E-mail:
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8970-7269
Abstract:
Criticism of the text of Gogol’s story “The Carriage” is complicated by the absence of a blank autograph and discrepancies between the two printed editions — in Pushkin’s “Sovremennik” (1836) and in the “Works of N. Gogol”, edited by N.Ya. Prokopovich (1842). The article substantiates the importance of such an additional factor as the parodic nature of the story in solving еditional problems. For a long time, “The Carriage” was perceived only as a joke and household satire. In the 1990s, Gogol studies began to discuss the parody specifics of the genre of this work. The specific characteristics of the story are the comic stylization of popular literary signs of the middle of nowhere, the mores of landowners, the habits and entertainment of provincial and quartered regimental officers, plot and compositional stereotypes, speech patterns, etc. At the same time, the parody level is subordinated to an independent literary plot, a holistic comic image. The author of the article is convinced that Gogol’s intention of parodying narrative cliches and the parodic nature of the narrator’s speech figure should be taken into account when solving textual and traditional problems, including attribution of editorial edits in two printed sources — to Gogol himself, Pushkin and Prokopovich.