The Works of Gogol in the Interpretation of the French New Critic Jean-Paul Weber

Abstract

The article aims to research Jean-Paul Weber’s interpretation of M. Gogol’s works. Besides, it aims to  rethink the main themes of this writer, but precisely in the interpretation of thematic criticism, which is fundamentally different from the representation of themes by classical thematology. Jean-Paul Weber, as a representative of one of the streams of French new criticism — thematic criticism, devoted an entire chapter to Gogol in his work “Thematic Domains” (“Domaines thématiques”) (1963). This is a rather unique case, since literary critics of this stream studied only French writers, with few exceptions, which include E. Poe and Kafka.
The relevance of such research is determined by the attempt to analyse the interpretation of Weber’s works of Gogol, as well as the importance to understand the main themes of this writer, his dichotomy between the homeland and the West, Orthodoxy and Catholicism, as the debate among scholars about Gogol’s Catholic inclination is still ongoing. The subject of analysis is Gogol’s works, while the main attention is directed to his novels “Nose” and “Viy”, for this purpose intertextual, biographical, textual, hermeneutic methods are applied.
In the process of the research, the main, obsessive themes of Gogol and their subsequent polarization were revealed — the theme of “nose” and “face”, “dome” and “portal”, “Orthodoxy” and “Catholicism”, “motherland” and “the West”. And it was also established that Gogol had a dichotomy between his homeland and the West, between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, which greatly affected his texts. Actually, the issue of obsessive themes in Gogol’s work, his dichotomy between the homeland and the West, between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, and how exactly this affected the works of this writer — is a prospect for further research and creates an interesting space for scientific discussion.