On the Cabbage Soup, Mutton Side, Pancakes and Other Culinary Dishes in the Gogol’s Poem “Dead Souls”: ...fortitude of the Russian stomach

Abstract

This article focuses on the recurring food imagery in the Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”. More specifically, the publication defines these images in terms of evaluative criteria according to the dish properties given in form of sensations, performed actions, and opinions expressed by the subject of evaluation. At the same time, the dishes depicted in the novel do more than describe some subjective taste experiences, or Russian cooking in the specified period of time. It is also a panegyric to the Russian appetite and stomach, symbolically reinterpreted – in addition to their physical interpretation – as a symbolic equivalent of the endless possibilities for transforming the world by the “gentlemen of the middling sort”.