“Russia! What Do You Want of Me?”: The Russian Reading Public in DeadSouls

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of Russia's changing readership and incipient print culture in Dead Souls. Though Nikolai Gogol' was received in salon society, his primary allegiance was to print and the broad (and thus unsophisticated) readership that was beginning to buy and read printed texts. Like other of Gogol“s works (“On the Development of Periodical Literature in 1834 and 1835,” “The Portrait”), Dead Souls reflects the author's awareness of the severe limitations of this audience, especially their desire for conventional plot devices and their eagerness for characters with whom to identify. Although Dead Souls invites readers' participation, it also reflects Gogol“s growing skepticism about inexperienced readers' attempts to create meaning, his disdain for their judgment, and his desire to assert total control over the meaning of his art. Lounsbery considers Dead Souls' reception and situates Gogol“s work in the context of the appearance of Library for Reading in 1834 and other writers' approaches to the problem of Russia's reading public (notably Faddei Bulgarin and Osip Senkovskii).