Research Paper on:
Gogol's 'The Nose' and 'The Portrait' and the Surreal and Fantastic

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the most fantastical stories. Now, while some of his tales are somewhat serious and down to earth, others are of a otherworldy nature, mystical, or mysteriously haunting. Two such tales  are "The Portrait" and "The Nose." In the following paper we examine these tales, focusing on the fantastical aspects of each. The Portrait "The Portrait" is a story  that is often frightening and haunting. It is the tale of a painting, purchased by a painter, and later discovered to be the work of a man who was, himself,  haunted by the portrait. It can be said to be a portrait of the Devil, and the portrait had many haunting qualities that showed up, actually, quite rarely. In truth,  one of the reasons why this tale is perhaps so fantastical is that the power of the portrait is left in the backs of our minds for a great deal  of the story. We first note the painter somehow taken with the painting, for reasons he does not know. he barters with the shopkeeper and purchases it, taking it  home. One at home he is intensely disturbed by the painting. He turns, and "A convulsively distorted face gazed at him, peeping forth from the surrounding canvas; two terrible eyes  were fixed straight upon him; on the mouth was written a menacing command of silence. Alarmed, he tried to scream and summon Nikita, who already was snoring in the ante-room;  but he suddenly paused and laughed" (Gogol NA). He regained his composure and realized that "it was the portrait he had bought, and which he had quite forgotten. The light  of the moon illuminating the chamber had fallen upon it, and lent it a strange likeness to life" (Gogol NA). Now, while we see him, perhaps, needlessly frightened, having