Dante’s Archetype and Apostasy in the Novel «The Old World Landowners» by N. Gogol

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of apostasy in the aspect of the Dante archetype in
N. Gogol’s novel «The Old World Landowners». The study was carried out in the directions of the ironic
and serious discourses of the Dante archetype, the ideological basis of the «topos of the earthly paradise».
The ideological, stylistic and phonological levels of the study made it possible to identify and describe the
basic structural levels of apostasy.
Righteousness as the worldview basis of the “topos of the earthly paradise” showed orientation of
the serious discourse to the Orthodox-axiological motives, ironic – to the travesty of ritual ceremonies with
christening by food / meal.
The analysis of double events: at the level of the fable – “earthly paradise”, at the level of plot
structure – the apostasy showed stylistic signs of the parable and conditions for the transformation of the
idyll. The appraisal categories of “passion” and “habits” illustrate the allegorical subtext of the parable.
The description of allusions to the history of Philemon and Baucis, the description of hell and purgatory,
the history of suicide and the imaginary heir of the old people, the mythological implication of sleep made
it possible to establish signs of a non-event. Didactics of the parable is shown in the author’s signs of
invasion into the narration text. Semiotics of the non-event is also analyzed in terms of the phonological
organization of the text – the range of sound symbolism. The connection with the Dante archetype is shown
in the genre of vision, complementing the ironic paraphrase of the Dante archetype. It justifies the apostasy
typing as the destruction of Russia of the «old-world landowners».