Gogol's Captain Kopeikin and Cervantes' Captive Captain: A Case of Metaparody

Abstract

Scholars have long noted affinities between Cervantes' Don Quixote and Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, but while frequently referring to an authorial relationship between the two, they have never really proved their assumptions with any substantiary evidence.' This assumption that Don Quixote and Dead Souls are related has traditionally been based upon two pieces of external evidence and a number of exceedingly general internal similarities. The first piece of external evidence is Gogol's description of the minor epic (malaia epopeia) in his unpublished literature primer for Russian schoolchildren; the second is his claim that Pushkin suggested the idea for Dead Souls as a project similar in theme and comparable in scope to Don Quixote. As to the literature primer, Don Quixote is listed as one example of the minor epic, and it is also this genre which Dead Souls seems best to exemplify. The primer was never published or even completed, and it cannot be treated as Gogol's definitive view of literature. Moreover, Gogol does not mention his own novel in the primer. The relatedness of Dead Souls to Don Quixote can only be inferred by the fact that each work seems to contain some characteristics of the minor epic as defined by Gogol.2