19 – Part II, Chapter I – Section 2

Failed to load content!

The page you were looking for was moved or doesn't exist.


Previous 30 days

Today

Previous 7 days

The podcast {{podcastName}} is embedded on this page from an open {{RSSLink}}. All files, descriptions, artwork and other metadata from the RSS-feed is the property of the podcast owner and not affiliated with or validated by Podplay.

The podcast {{podcastName}} is distributed by Podplay. Here you find the podcasts {{RSSLink}}.

Play latest

Resume

More

Popular podcasts

{{title}} | {{podcastTitle}} | Podplay

Page not found

An error has occurred

Find and listen to your favourite podcasts at Podplay.

Podplay

{{title}} | Listen at Podplay

Find and listen to your favourite podcasts at Podplay - Your home for podcasts.

Podplay | Your Home for Podcasts

Account settings - Data

My account – delete account

Account settings - settings

My account - Settings

My account

My account - password

Something went wrong, please try again. If the problem persists, please contact us.

Go to start page

Click the button below to request your data. The data will be sent to the email associated with your account.

You have already requested your data. You must wait before requesting again.

A download link will be sent to your email when the file has been created.

Request your data

Click below to delete your account. Note that all information associated with your account, such as which podcasts you follow and listening history, will also be deleted.

Delete Account

Update account information

You have entered wrong password. Please try again.

Update password

You need to enter your current password to make changes on your profile.

Profile name is part of your public profile.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an “epic poem in prose”, and within the book as a “novel in verse”. Despite supposedly completing the trilogy’s second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne’s Sentimental Journey), it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form. In Russia before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners were entitled to own serfs to farm their land. Serfs were for most purposes considered the property of the landowner, and could be bought, sold, or mortgaged against, as any other chattel. To count serfs (and people in general), the measure word “soul” was used: e.g., “six souls of serfs”. The plot of the novel relies on “dead souls” (i.e., “dead serfs”) which are still accounted for in property registers. On another level, the title refers to the “dead souls” of Gogol’s characters, all of which visualise different aspects of poshlost (an untranslatable Russian word which is perhaps best rendered as “self-satisfied inferiority”, moral and spiritual, with overtones of middle-class pretentiousness, fake significance, and philistinism). 

19 – Part II, Chapter I – Section 2

Society & Culture