"Person imprisoned in the coat":a broad rhetorical interpretation of Gogol's Coat
Analyzing Gogol's Coat from the perspective of generalized rhetoric,we can find that"coat",as the key image of the novel,points to both conceptual meaning(material coat)and rhetorical meaning(spiritual coat).The conceptual and rhetorical meanings of"coat"is not only involved in the construction of the novel text,but also in the construction of the protagonist Akaki's spiritual world.