A comparative study on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Nikolai Gogol

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe and Nikolai Gogol were born in the same year, however there are othersimilarities and coincidences that make it interesting to compare them. This essaycomprises of a detailed comparison of three works by Gogol and two works by Poe. It isdivided into 12 sections. The first is a short introduction. The second takes a brief lookinto the history of the short story. The third and fourth introduce the history of literaturein the USA and in Russia. These sections might seem like a broad introduction to manydifferent areas, however they cover important matters for comparing these two authors.The fifth deals briefly with Poe’s and Gogol’s life. The sixth looks closer at theRomantic era and the genres Gogol and Poe fall into, Fantastic and Gothic. The seventhsection gives reasons for which stories were chosen. The five stories chosen forcomparison have similarities and differences, which are explored in relation to theauthors’ genres. The eight is an overview of the three stories by Gogol chosen forcomparison, and has three subsections for each story. The ninth section does the samefor Poe’s two stories. The tenth section compares common and uncommon entities andthemes within all the stories. The eleventh section concludes the essay. These veryimaginative and wonderful stories are meant to entertain the reader, however in adifferent way. Finally the twelfth section contains the bibliography.