The book contains research that expands the context of understanding and perception of Gogol's work. They analyze the mythological semantics of images of space and time in the writer’s works - from “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” to “Dead Souls”, the specificity of Gogol’s laughter in the context of the traditions of patristic literature and Russian homiletics, the role of the European cultural context and genre traditions of mass European literature in Gogol's poetics. The manual is intended for school and university literature teachers, for anyone interested in Gogol's work.