This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Dead Souls portrays and demonstrates the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and character through endeavors of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and typical people of the Russian middle-class, whom he encounters. The novel reveals an encompassing picture of the ailing social system in Russia after the unsuccessful French invasion.

Although Dead Souls (1842) was largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, his last work remains to this day the most essentially Russian of all the great novels in Russian literature. As we follow its hero Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned confidence man, about the Russian countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise, there unfolds before us a gallery of characters worthy in comic range of Chaucer, Rabelais, Fielding, and Sterne. With its rich and ebullient language, ironic twists, and startling juxtapositions, Dead Souls stands as one of the most unusual and poetic masterpieces of the nineteenth century. This new translation by Christopher English includes the surviving chapters and fragments of Part Two, and is complemented by an introductory essay by the pre-eminent Gogol scholar, Robert Maguire.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

In every department of life, ICTs have become environmental forces which are creating and transforming our realities.

This strikingly original work presents an integral and inclusive explanatory model for the elusive narrative strategies of Gogol's Dead Souls; in the process, it draws larger conclusions about Gogol's creative methods and aesthetic concerns. Throughout his career, Gogol manifests two seemingly contradictory urges: the urge toward order, system, clarity and wholeness, and the urge toward disorder, disruption, obscurity, and fragmentation. The author seeks to make a system, an anatomy, of Gogol's impulses toward disorder and disruption in Dead Souls in all their various and distinctive aspects. In anatomizing Gogolian disorder, she explores the mythology of creativity and lying in Gogol; his (at least literary) fear of the family; the relation between the uses of obscurity in Dead Souls and the poetry of Russian Sentimentalism, especially Zhukovskii's; Dead Souls as parable; and the mutually subversive relation between ¹ction and non¹ction in Gogol.

This carefully crafted ebook: “A SCOTS QUAIR: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe & Grey Granite (World's Classics Series)” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Sunset Song is the first book of the trilogy A Scots Quair and widely regarded as one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century. Chris Guthrie, the female protagonist, is a strong character who grows up in a dysfunctional farming family. Life is hard after her dad's death and she must take some tough decisions to save her farms under the inevitable threat of World War I. Cloud HoweII is the story of Chris Guthrie and her second husband Robert. They move to Segget, a mill town where a class struggle is taking shape and Robert is at the helm of political affairs. Grey Granite is the final book of the trilogy and the story of Ewan, Chris's son in the depression era. Ewan is forced to become a communist activist due to violence and police brutality. But everything is threatened when the cause becomes bigger than the people around him. Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (1901 – 1935), a Scottish writer famous for his contribution to the Scottish Renaissance and portrayal of strong female characters.

Story of a saga video games... If the Dark Souls series managed to seduce players and journalists, it was mainly by word of mouth. It was such a great success that Dark Souls 2 was named “Game of the Year” 2014 by the vast majority of gaming magazines and websites. To date, this saga is one of the most important in the gaming industry. The odd thing is that these games are well known for their difficulty and their cryptic universe. This publication narrates the epic success story, but also describes its gameplay mechanics and its specific lore across more than 300 pages. Characters, plots and the scenario of the three Souls (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II) are deciphered by Damien Mecheri and Sylvain Romieu, who spent a long year studying these dense and enigmatic games down to the smallest detail. The serie Dark Souls and her spiritual father Demon's Souls will not have secrets for you anymore! EXTRACT "In May 2014, Hidetaka Miyazaki succeeded Naotoshi Zin as president of FromSoftware, after the studio was purchased by Kadokawa Shoten. This was a highly significant promotion for the person who had led the company’s most successful project, Dark Souls. And yet, he did not lose from view what had attracted him to the field: an insatiable creative drive. In spite of his new status within the studio, one of the conditions he requested and was granted was to remain creative director of his new project: Bloodborne. This allowed him to successfully design this spiritual successor to the first Souls game, while also assuming his new responsibilities. Given his drive to work and create, it is not surprising how quickly Miyazaki moved up through the ranks." ABOUT THE AUTHORS Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writers team of Gameplay RPG in 2004, writing several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. He continued his work with the team in another publication called Background, before continuing the online adventure in 2008 with the site Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher’s two founders. Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. For Third Éditions, he is actively working on the “Level Up” and “Année jeu vidéo” collections. He has also written or co-written several works from the same publisher: The Legend of Final Fantasy X, Welcome to Silent Hill: a journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: a Different Perspective on Video Games and, of course, the first volume of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave. Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Sylvain Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques-Ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.

First published in the year 1842, Russian writer-activist Nikolai Gogol's book 'Dead Souls' was one of the most appreciated satirical works of the 19th century Russian literature. The purpose of the novel was to demonstrate the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and character.

We thought we had gone through the topic in the first volume, those two games opened new pists of reflexions. The in-depth analysis of Hidetaka Miyazaki's Dark Souls saga continues with this volume 2, decoding the Bloodborne and Dark Souls III episodes. An indinspensale ebook for all the fans of the game Dark Souls ! EXTRACT "The project, christened Project Beast, began soon after the Astorias of the Abyss DLC was released in August 2012. At the time, FromSoftware was also beginning to build Dark Souls II, its cash cow. Miyazaki kept his distance from this sequel, which was handed off to Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, with support from the FromSoftware president and creator of King’s Field, Naotoshi Zin, who supervised the game system. On his end, Hidetaka Miyazaki formed a trusted team of regular collaborators, such as lead programmer Jun Itô (who had already filled this role for Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls), composer and lead sound designer Tsukasa Saitô (Armored Core games), and most of his regular artists: Daisuke Satake, Masanori Waragai and Hiroshi Nakamura. The success of Demon’s Souls, and the even greater success of Dark Souls, allowed FromSoftware to grow its ranks significantly. In total, no fewer than fifty programmers participated in the project, along with around twenty game system designers and fifty people working on visual creation (animation, scenery, characters, etc.). Thanks to financial support from Sony, many Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese studios were sub-contracted during the production to help with graphics and visuals." ABOUT THE AUTHORS Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writers team of Gameplay RPG in 2004, writing several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. He continued his work with the team in another publication called Background, before continuing the online adventure in 2008 with the site Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher’s two founders. Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. For Third Éditions, he is actively working on the “Level Up” and “Année jeu vidéo” collections. He has also written or co-written several works from the same publisher: The Legend of Final Fantasy X, Welcome to Silent Hill: a journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: a Different Perspective on Video Games and, of course, the first volume of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave. Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Sylvain Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques-Ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.