“The Diary of a Madman”: Comparative compositional analysis of Nikolai Gogol’s and Leo Tolstoy’s homonymous stories and their use in the lessons with foreign students

   “The Diary of a Madman” is the title chosen by two great writers of Russian literature, Nikolai Gogol and Leo Tolstoy to name two of their works separated by fifty years. The title is a primordial element in the composition of a creative work. It is the first level of contact between the reader and the author, the catalytic element that focuses our attention, as readers, from the very beginning of the story. In this paper we will analyse two works, a story and a short story by Nikolai Gogol and Leo Tolstoy respectively, starting from the fact of the coincidence in the title, with the aim of determining their similarities and differences and analysing how the author, through the composition of his text, conditions the reader's perception in each case. For our reader, a student of the Russian language and literature as a foreign language and literature, these initial coincidences are particularly striking. He will see, after analysing the composition, how each author, by means of different stylistic devices, provokes very different reactions in the reader. In the case of Gogol, by resorting to the fantastic; through irony, he achieves a distancing, while in the case of Tolstoy, in a realistic register and with a profound philosophical-religious subtext, he achieves a significant degree of empathy with the reader. As a result, the portraits of the two literary characters are diametrically opposed.

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