Gogol’s Petersburg: Appearance and Reference

Key

Locations where the action of the stories takes place

Locations mentioned by characters or narrators of the stories

The map highlights the difference between places which appear directly in the texts and those to which reference is made, a significant aspect of Gogol’s stories, which show a marked tendency to describe one place by comparing it to another; in the opening paragraphs of Nevskii Prospekt this is particularly noticeable, as the narrator repeated mentions out-lying districts in his panegyric to the city’s main street, thereby creating invisible threads that draw the outskirts of the city into the orbit of the centre.