Résumé
Résumé de Taras Boulba et autres récits
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who love Cossack adventure, ghost stories told by the stove and comic tales of petty officials will find all three here, along with sharp satire and warm, vivid storytelling.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Imagine a writer who loves both the wild steppe and the gray government office. Nikolai Gogol wrote these tales in the 1830s and early 1840s, and they show his two worlds. One is Ukraine, with its Cossacks, witches and village storytellers. The other is St. Petersburg, with its clerks, painters and rumors. The title story, Taras Bulba, is a short epic of war and family. You meet a devil with a magic flower, a clerk who saves for an overcoat, two friends who sue each other, and a painter whose talent drains away. Gogol makes you laugh, shudder and ache, sometimes on a single page.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A father hurries his sons toward warFree
- 2Rage against Poland and a bread-carrying secret
- 3Brotherhood outweighs every other bond
- 4A wounded father risks everything in Warsaw
- 5A devil's gold buys a lover and costs a soul
- 6A poor copyist loses what little he has
- 7Two best friends sue over a gun and a goose
- 8A cursed portrait follows a painter's ambition
- 9A boastful host, a calash, and Gogol's voices
Point clé 1 sur 9
A father hurries his sons toward war
Old Bulba greets his sons, Ostap and Andrii, home from the seminary at Kief, by laughing at their long gowns. When Ostap warns him, the two trade punches in the yard. Taras is delighted that his son can fight.
He tells the boys that books are rubbish and that a sword is the only mother a Cossack needs. He will take them to Zaporozhe within the week.
The pale mother sits over her sleeping sons that night, combing their hair and weeping. At dawn she clings to the younger one's stirrup. Then the riders cross the green steppe to the Setch, the Cossack camp on the Dnieper, where newcomers affirm their belief in Christ and the Trinity, say they attend church and make the sign of the cross.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Taras Boulba et autres récits
What is Taras Bulba, and Other Tales about?
It collects Gogol's Cossack epic Taras Bulba with five shorter tales: St. John's Eve, The Cloak, the story of the two Ivans, The Portrait and The Carriage. Together they mix war, folklore, satire and ghostly mystery.
Is Taras Bulba a true story?
No. It is fiction set in the fifteenth century among the Zaporozhian Cossacks of Ukraine. Gogol draws on real history, Cossack customs and folk songs.
Who are the Zaporozhian Cossacks and what is the Setch?
The Zaporozhtzi were free Cossack warriors living below the Dnieper rapids. The Setch was their fortified camp, where kurens, or troops, lived in turf-covered sheds and elected their chief, the Koschevoi.
Why does Akakiy Akakievitch care so much about a cloak?
Winter in St. Petersburg is bitter, and his thin cloak no longer protects him. Saving for the new one gives his lonely life a goal and a companion, so the garment comes to mean warmth, respect and hope.
Is the book easy to read?
Gogol's tales move briskly, with clear scenes, vivid characters and funny asides.