Biblical topics and key motifs in N.V. Gogol’s “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”: intertextual analysis

The interest in the Bible as an intertext and fragmentary studies on the reception of biblical topoi determine the relevance of this study. The aim of the study is to consider biblical topoi as semantic dominants of N.V. Gogol’s “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”. The material of the study is the autobiographical text of N.V. Gogol “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”, the Bible, and the works of Ignatius Brianchaninov. The methods of the study are motivated by its objectives: the technique of continuous sampling, the descriptive and analytical method, textual analysis, cognitive analysis, philological analysis of the literary text. The authors prove that biblical topoi in the autobiographical narrative of N.V. Gogol acts as a semantic dominant of the text, ascending to universal human values and becoming precedent. From the standpoint of semiotics and linguistic-cultural analysis combining literary, linguistic, comparative-typological and cultural-historical research methods, the author’s strategies of metaphorical comprehension of biblical topoi are considered: “God”, “Will of God”, “Providence”, “Humility”, “Suffering”, “Gratitude”, “Love”; connotative meanings of dominant deep images of biblical phraseological units (submission to God’s will, sorrow for one’s sins, God’s will on all human affairs) in the context of structuring the spiritual, religious and ethical experience of moral instructions of the writer. The prospects of the study are in identifying the specifics of the religious universals in the writer’s autobiographical discourse. © 2025, RUDN University. All rights reserved.