ALMA CLASSICS NEW BOOK INFORMATION EVERGREENS • £4.99 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Translated by Donald Rayﬁ Eld

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ALMA CLASSICS NEW BOOK INFORMATION EVERGREENS • £4.99 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Translated by Donald Rayfi eld “A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.” SELLING POINTS: • Brand-new translation of Gogol’s masterpiece • Includes pictures and an extensive section on Gogol’s life and works • Follows the success of Gogol’s Petersburg Tales • Fully annotated edition DESCRIPTION: A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town and proceeds to visit a succession of landowners, making each of them an unusual and somewhat macabre proposition. He offers to buy the rights to the dead serfs who are SERIES: Alma Classics still registered on the landowner’s estate, thus reducing their liability for taxes. It is not Evergreens clear what Chichikov’s intentions are with the dead serfs he is purchasing, and despite May 25th 2017 his attempts to ingratiate himself, his strange behaviour arouses the suspicions of every- £4.99 one in the town. 978-1-84749-628-7 512 pp • PB A biting satire of social pretensions and pomposity, Dead Souls has been revered Subject: FC since its original publication in 1842 as one of the funniest and most brilliant novels of nineteenth-century Russia. Its unfl inching and remorseless depiction of venality in Russian society is a lasting tribute to Gogol’s comic genius. BY THE SAME AUTHOR: “Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange.” Vladimir Nabokov ABOUT THE AUTHOR: One of the leading fi gures in nineteenth-century Russian literature, Nikolai Gogol (1809–52) is best known for his satirical masterpiece, Dead Souls, and humorous plays and short stories such as The Government Inspector and The Overcoat, written in a highly original and trenchant style. ALSO AVAILABLE BY THE SAME AUTHOR: Petersburg Tales • PB • £4.99 • 978-1-84749-349-1 TO PLACE YOUR ORDER, PLEASE CONTACT: Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS Tel: 01256 302 692 or Fax: 01256 812 521 FOR SALES ENQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP Tel: 0207 631 5600 or Fax: 0207 631 5800 For more information about Alma Classics, please visit: www.almaclassics.com.

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The Government Inspector Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the Original by Nikolai Gogol Directed by Allison Narver
The Government Inspector Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the original by Nikolai Gogol Directed by Allison Narver All original material copyright © Seattle Shakespeare Company 2017 WELCOME Dear Educators, Welcome to our production of The Government Inspector! When I first read this script, I found myself laughing out loud every couple of pages. It’s a hilarious read of a farcical play, and I was really excited to watch it. Director Allison Narver mentioned that all of the characters are horrible people, and the protagonist of this show is comedy. Normally, I don’t love watching shows full of horrible people, but this one is so darn funny that I can spend the whole show rooting for the main character — comedy! After thinking about the play for a few weeks, and keeping up with the news cycle, I’ve been thinking more about themes in The Government Inspector. This production will simultaneously be quite relevant to our contemporary era of government corruption, and will be an escape to a world where that corruption is lampooned and all the officials get taken advantage of. This play can spark political discussions, but it can also just leave you laughing at the absurdity of it. It’s all in there. We hope you enjoy the show! Best, Michelle Burce Education Director seattleshakespeare.org/education 206-733-8228 ext. 251 or [email protected] PRODUCTION SPONSORS CONTENTS Plot Synopsis . 1 Character List . 1 Nikolai Gogol . 2 A brief look at the life of Russia’s celebrated playwright and novelist. Placing the Production . 3–4 Take a look inside the director’s inspiration and thoughts for the production Tidbits and Trivia .
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A Comparative Examination of Dead Souls, the Master and Margarita, and Revelation 12-3
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NIKOLAI GOGOL's COMMEDIA DEL DEMONIO by ANN ELIZABETH
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THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR STUDY GUIDE DIRECTOR: LISA KORNETSKY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: KYLE PERRY DRAMATURGY: JAZMIN MEDINA PERFORMANCE DATES: APRIL 29TH, 30TH AT 7:30PM MAY 5TH, 6TH, 7TH AT 7:30PM MAY 6TH AT 10:00AM UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-PARKSIDE MAIN STAGE THEATRE SYNOPSIS CHARACTERS In a little Russian village in 1836, the townspeople and the ANTON ANTONOVICH SKVOZNIK DUMAKHANOVSKY officials that run it, learn that a government inspector will be coming to town for an undercover inspection. Inevitably, chaos Anton (ahn-tawn) Antonovich (ahn-toe-noff-ich) Skvoznik (shk- ensues as Mayor Antonovich and the other government vost-nic) Dumakhanovsky (doom-mah-kah-noff-skee) officials try to take matters into their own hands by trying to The Mayor is one of the most corrupt officiates of the town who hide and bribe their crooked ways. Eventually, the mayor is has the most to fear from the arrival of the secret government given local gossip that the government inspector is staying at a inspector. Gogol describes him as “a man who has grown old in small inn in the village, and he and the other bumbling officials the state service, who “wears an air of dignified respectability, decide to pay him a visit. Little does the town know that the but is by no means incorruptible.” He too, like me many others, man they visit, Alexandreyevich Hlestakov, is a civil servant indulges in the fantasy of moving up in status by Hlestakov’s running away from his problems and in no way is he a supposed promotion and proposed engagement to his daughter.
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2 Table of Contents I. Introduction: Gogol's Conception of Evil As Poshlost' 3 II. the Representation of Language in the Ve
2 Table of Contents I. Introduction: Gogol’s Conception of Evil as Poshlost’ 3 II. The Representation of Language in the Verbal Interactions of the Characters of Dead Souls 9 1.1 Words as Vehicles for Poshlost’ 11 1.2 The Authority of the Name-Giver 18 1.3 Linguistic Deficiency in the Town of N— 28 III. The Dilemma of the Christian Author 37 2.1 From Nomothete to Author 38 2.2 Augustine, Dante, and the Moral Status of the Christian Author 41 2.3 Creating the Demonic Town of N—: The Narrator’s Negating Poetics 52 2.4 Visions of the Russian Language Reformed 65 IV. Conclusion 72 3 Introduction: Gogol’s Conception of Evil as Poshlost’ That there is a connection between Nikolai Gogol’s aesthetic representations of absence and his conceptualization of metaphysical evil has been well established within the scholarly literature. In the Gogolian universe, figures and objects that are literally or metaphorically “empty” in some way—particularly those that give a false impression of plenitude or significance—are to be regarded with suspicion, as beings that are potentially linked with demonic forces. Dmitry Merezhkovsky was one of the first to comment on the relationship between evil and absence in Gogol, observing in “Gogol and the Devil” (“Гоголь и черт,” 1906) that “The Devil is the noumenal median of being, the denial of all heights and depths—eternal planarity, eternal banality. The sole subject of Gogol’s art is the Devil in just this sense” (57). Dmitry Chizhevsky, in his 1938 essay “About Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’” (“О 'Шинели' Гоголя”), notes that Gogol’s stories depict a cosmos in which “insignificance, emptiness, ‘nothingness’ are represented as being significant and essential” (306), and that this cosmic condition is indicative of the Devil’s influence.
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