Nikolai Gogol is one of the mysterious figures in the history of Russian literature whose writing combines between real and fantastic,  "low" and  "high", despicible and sublime. The course will discuss various literary genres  in Gogol's oeuvre, such as folk tales ("The Ukranian Stories"), urban stories ("The Peterburg Stories"), comedy ("The Inspector General") and the picaresque novel ("Dead Souls"). These texts will be examined in the context of  contemporary Russian and European literature, and particularly the interactions between Romanticism and Realism.