Ot Gogolja k Bachtinu

In the famous Gogol’ story "Nevsky Prospekt" it seems possible to identify two different moments of the author’s thought and artistic development
Nikolaj Gogol’ goes through different narrative stages in his life, passing from the initial playful and carnivalesque world (in the bakhtinian sense) of the Vecera na chutore bliz Dikan’ki through the romantic grotesque (Bakhtin still in effect) that marks his mature works, and the culmination of which is representes by the Mertvye dushi, up to the religious sense degenerated into madness of his last sad period. "The Nevsky Prospekt", or rather, the two apparently distinct events that make up the story, can be traced to the first two moments of narrative above described witnessing in this way the enormous importance of the story as a whole viewed as the "moment" of passage by the carnivalesque grotesque romance.